by Sally Koslow
Why can’t I get through? “You’re speaking of refugees raised with culture, refinement, and education. No one was an underfed, bald-headed girl held hostage in hand-me-down boots at an asylum—and plenty of refugees who arrive here don’t admit they’re Jews.”
He pulls me to him. “Sheilo, if only I’d been there to save you from all this—those other men especially . . . their hands on you.” What seems to trouble him most is the junction where my past encroaches on his territory. He embraces me tightly. “I think I may be ill.”
I break away. “I can’t face you. I don’t even want to face myself. Could you please drive me home?” In the car we do not speak, though my confession echoes in a silent squall. When we reach my villa, Scott walks me to my door, takes three Nembutal from his pocket, presses them into my hand, and kisses me on the forehead before he returns to his car. I swallow the drugs, crawl into bed, and close my eyes. Were I a gambling woman, I’d bet I’d never see Scott Fitzgerald again.
Chapter 34
1938
I sleep until the next afternoon and wake, my linens tangled and moist with perspiration, to a persistent ringing of the doorbell. If it’s Scott, I do not want to face him, but the sound will not stop.
Even though it’s Sunday, a delivery boy who must have earned a hefty tip drops off a bouquet of jasmine. For your grace and intelligence, Scott . The note is gallant but distant. No Sheilo, no Presh, no love. Nor does Scott call, though we had planned to meet friends at the Santa Anita racetrack. I had been looking forward to cheering on the thoroughbreds and their jockeys in flamboyant silks.
I spend the day wondering what part of my fraud sickens Scott most? That I have the temerity to become enraged by his drinking, a common shortcoming, when my defects are far more egregious? The irony that despite my deceit, I have the chutzpah to make my living by spilling secrets more innocent than my own?
Marlene Dietrich is contemplating a divorce in order to marry Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
After playing the signature role in Dracula’s Daughter, Gloria Holden is seen as a ghoul and can’t get work. She’s had her nose shortened and her hairline plucked higher in hopes of capturing the delicacy of Myrna Loy.
Dear readers, Ernst Lubitsch suffers from the immortal sin of being short.
Is Clark Gable the father of Loretta Young’s baby? Just asking.
Well, not entirely innocent.
There is still no word from Scott, who I hoped might stop by on the way to the studio. But I cannot enjoy the luxury of sulking. I drive to one of Burbank’s most distant back lots to interview Gary Cooper. Even in eyeliner Mr. Glamour-in-a-Saddle is six feet and one hundred eighty pounds of prime American beefcake, the ultimate shaygetz, who both Warner brothers, Louis B. Mayer, and Samuel Goldwyn would pay a cool million to be.
I may be the only woman in Hollywood with whom Gary hasn’t slept. I’ve never been drawn to his brand of perfection, though I wouldn’t mind if he’d remove his pants to verify what Lupe Vélez reports about the size of his manly parts.
Gary and I banter, but I could get a better interview with Rin Tin Tin. After twenty minutes of fruitless chitchat, I tell him I must return to Hollywood. To fill my column, I’ll ask Jonah to supply some fodder and pay him for his trouble.
At home, I find two-dozen long-stemmed roses, sunny yellow, resting inside a florist’s box with a note: With love from your Scott. I am as relieved as Little Orphan Annie on the day Daddy Warbucks adopted her, thankful for the love. I search your as if I am a British spy decoding a telegram from Hitler to Goering.
There is also an envelope addressed in Scott’s handwriting. FOR SHIELAH: A BELOVED INFIDEL , it says. This is not the first time he has misspelled my name—or other words. Scott has a vast vocabulary. I am the better speller.
I immediately open my dictionary. Infidel: a person who does not believe in religion or who adheres to a religion other than one’s own. I break the envelope’s seal and slide out a poem written on two sheets of paper.
That sudden smile across a room,
Was certainly not learned from me
That first faint quiver of a bloom
The eyes initial extacy,
Scott and his spelling.
Whoever taught you how to page
Your loves so sweetly—now as then
I thank him for my heritage
The eyes made bright by other men.
My “heritage”? That’s one way to put it.
No slumberous pearl I valued less
For years spent in a rajah’s crown
And I should rather rise and bless
Your earliest love than cry him down.
Whoever wound your heart up knew
His job. How can I hate him when
He did his share to fashion you?
A heart made warm by other men.
Some kisses nature doesn’t plan.
She works in such a sketchy way.
The child, tho father to the man
Must be instructed how to play.
What traffic your lips had with mine
Don’t lie in any virgin’s ken.
I found the oldest, richest wine
On lips made soft by other men.
The lies you tell are epic things
No amateur would ever try
Soft little parables with wings,
I know not even God would try.
He got to my lies. I knew he would. He seems to be impressed by my audacity, and there is more, ending with:
But when I join the other ghosts
Who lay beside your flashing fire
I must believe I’ll drink their toast
To one who was a sweet desire.
A sweet fulfillment—all they found
Was worth remembering. And then
He’ll hear us as the wine goes around
A greeting from us other men.
—S
No one has ever written me a poem, least of all about my epic deceit and sexual history. Stepney Green and the Jews’ Orphan Asylum don’t merit a line, though perhaps the only rhyme Scott can think of for Jewess is St. Louis. I can only laugh at this bizarre tribute, which I find schmaltzy, seductive, and an immense relief. My sentimental romantic is offering me a pardon, though of all the things about myself I wish I could change, my sexual resume isn’t on the list. Yet this, apparently, is what riles him most.
I dial MGM. There is no answer at Scott’s desk, nor does he pick up at the Garden of Allah. I decide to drive there and wait for him to appear. I begin to speed down my curvy road when I spot Scott chugging in the other direction. We both stop. He walks to my car and reaches through the open window to cup my chin in his hand. “Were you running away?” he asks, his thumb gently stroking my cheek.
“I was looking to thank you for the flowers, darling, and the poem. Especially that. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.”
“I’m no Keats, but I wrote what’s in my heart.”
We drive up the hill to my flat. Scott takes my hand as we enter, sits by my side on the patio, and he turns to me. “Presh, if you think I would ever end things over your name or your background, you know nothing about me,” he says. “Whoever you are I want you, the real you. And for God’s sake, Lily Shiel, half of Hollywood has taken a nom de guerre.”
He stands, sniffs like a society matron with his perfect nose in the air, and in a falsetto asks, “Madam, may I present Lucille LeSueur?”
That would be Joan Crawford. “Of the green pea LeSueurs?” I ask. “Charmed.”
“And Sir Frederick Austerlitz?”
“Fred Astaire of the Omaha Austerlitzes?”
I could add Spangler Arlington Brugh of Filley, Nebraska, more commonly known as Robert Taylor, but after our dinner, Scott forbids me to mention him.
“Indeed,” he says, “but I’m sure you don’t know Archibald Alexander Leach.”
“Oh, but I do. We have met. Across the pond.” Cary.
“And Josef von Sternberg?”
He acquired the “von” while sailing the Atlantic. The director owns no German schloss. A yarmulke, perhaps.
Amusing as this is, I say, “Scott, it would be one thing if an agent or studio had christened me, but I renamed myself. Your poem didn’t get at that.”
His voice turns as serious as a doctor’s delivering a fatal diagnosis. “It’s you I love, not a footnote like where you’re from. Sheilah Graham, don’t you know that by now? Why do you doubt me?” He pulls me close and we kiss. “If I tried to craft a heroine, I couldn’t create one as interesting, complicated, and giving as you,” he insists. “We’re also not so very different. Most Protestants despise and look down on Catholics, which I am, technically, though I haven’t been in church for years. Social climbing is the Catholic boy’s favorite sport. What do you think John O’Hara and I reminisce about half the time? For centuries wars have been fought between our kind and Protestants and we’re still at it. They don’t want us in their clubs or for their daughters’ husbands, and I doubt there’ll ever be a Catholic president.”
Scott seems unstoppable.
“Also—hear me out—I admire people who’ve pulled themselves up,” he insists, gathering steam. “Every Midwesterner does. You’ve made yourself somebody from nobody. You have grit. Courage. Qualities I envy, which I lack.” He takes me by the shoulders. “You’re the American dream incarnate, and my kind of dame.”
I’ve been called worse, usually by Hedda Hopper.
“You may think you have a sketchy past,” he continues, “but mostly, it’s tragic. Sheilo, with me you’ll always be safe, I promise. Remember, I don’t just love you. I like you. Isn’t that the first thing I ever told you?” He lets go of my shoulders and clears his throat. “There’s something I do need to know, though.” I stiffen. “Did you call things off with Donegall because he discovered your story?”
“Certainly not. You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”
“But were you worried that he’d find out?”
I was. My divorce from Johnny was considered odious all on its own, and if Don knew all my lies, our marriage—if it got to that—would have crashed in a hail of headlines. But I believe Don never learned the truth, nor did I love him one percent as much as I do Scott.
“I ended things with Don because I wanted—want—to be with you. The sole reason.” And why not admit it? “I still want to be with you, more now than before.” Two broken people who together make a whole.
He turns his face toward the darkening twilight. “Sweetheart, I feel the same way.”
I am wilted from the last few days, but when we adjourn to my bedroom to seal our contract, for the first time, in a gift to one another, both of us strip to our skin, in all its vulnerability. I place my hand on Scott’s beating heart, and then feather the whorls of soft blond hair on his chest, working my way down his pale, slender torso. He does the same, fondling and praising my curves. “You, my love, are a goddess,” he says.
The candle burns low as our sweat mingles and dries. I feel as if my past is simply my past. I am understood. I want to own this man, my knight, my stable boy, my novelist. I want him to own me, and I want this for eternity.
Chapter 35
1938
Fall is coming on, with dampness in the air. Scott wraps himself in his ancient flannel bathrobe, ripped at the elbows, showing his grey sweater underneath. A pencil sticks up over each ear, and the stubs of a half dozen others peep from the breast pocket of his robe like so many cigars. A pocket bulges with two packs of Raleighs. My handsome lover, trying to write.
I worry what winter will do to the nineteenth-century lungs that Scott is convinced are ridden with latent tuberculosis. Time to find a place for him to live that isn’t the beach. I have two jobs now, author of “Hollywood Today: A Gadabout’s Notebook,” and the wifely chore of organizing Scott’s life. I love both. With Scott, I have the family I’ve always coveted, and it includes Scottie, who has recently visited. We are relaxing into a cordial friendship. Since “mother” is taken, I’ve cast myself in the role of older sister, eager to spring to her defense.
Yesterday Scott read a letter he planned to send to his daughter, who is now at Vassar. “I am intensely busy, working like hell, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he says.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little snide? For all you know Scottie’s working as hard as you are.”
“I worry she’s falling in love with Cro-Magnons, natural-born stevedores, and future members of the Shriners while she’s taking only the easy courses.”
If I had a daughter, I’d lay off the scolding and be the kind and understanding mother I never had myself. I say as much to Scott. He softens his letter. Slightly.
Today we are driving north on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, over the summit and down into the San Fernando Valley to Encino. A squadron of hills grandly called the Santa Monica Mountains crouches in the distance and protects this lowland from ocean fog, ensuring that the weather is always warmer and dryer than in Hollywood and certainly Malibu. We pass citrus groves and ranches and finally arrive at a large white cottage surrounded by rolling lawns and old-fashioned gardens in full bloom. Bees and butterflies circle honeysuckle and zinnias.
“I hate it,” Scott says immediately. “Looks like a dusty crypt.” Perhaps it resembles the drowsy institution in North Carolina where Zelda lives, which is why Scott also says, “I’m not a dead man, at least not yet, and how can I tell anyone I live in a place called Belly Acres?” Which the owner, the prissy-voiced actor Edward Everett Horton, has named his estate. Ed realizes that film careers aren’t eternal. Land is.
The rent, however, is reasonable for a pine-paneled living room, gracious dining room, four bedrooms, a maid’s room, and a long balcony off the master bedroom where Scott can pace, as he’s done virtually every day on the widow’s walk in Malibu. Beyond a white picket fence, there are deck chairs under a magnolia tree, a tennis court, and a pool—currently unfilled. I declare it ideal.
Despite Scott’s gripes, he agrees to the rental. Once again we move his meager belongings. Like his parents, he has never owned a home. All his life, Scott Fitzgerald has been a vagabond.
His sarcasm persists until our young friend Buff Cobb visits and declares the house charming, especially its fence, which she compares to tombstones on a Confederate graveyard. The image reverses Scott’s opinion.
“Come live with me, Sheilah,” he says the evening of Buff’s visit. “I’m lost in this big place. You can give up your villa, rent something small in Hollywood for appearance’s sake and when we want to stay overnight in town. Your Catholic boy is ready to live in sin, not see his girl only on weekends.”
I find a small flat on Hayworth off Sunset. As if we are newlyweds, we buy furniture for Encino at Barker’s Bargain Basement. I pick a green chintz sofa and after settling into several armchairs, bouncing in each, Scott chooses one in green velvet with an ottoman. To our purchases, I add four fluffy goose-down pillows and a yellow chenille coverlet. I chase away the inner choir that tells me I am investing in a doomed future, but for almost a year, Scott has been attentive and abstinent to the point of saintliness. I have buried the memory of our Malibu party.
When I’m not running down gossip or attending screenings, I now spend most of my time at the house, where we each have our own study. At night we sit on the balcony—I with my tea and Scott his Coca-Cola—and occasionally hear voices carried by the wind from the RKO Western lot a few miles away. “All quiet, everyone! Camera! Shoot!” The air fills with gunshots and the stampede of horses’ hooves. It is a long way from Stepney Green.
Autumn ticks past as Scott tries to turn The Women into a screed on females who don’t work. “I reserve special contempt for girls given every advantage with no price to pay for these privileges,” he rants one night, to my delight, since it’s the last rebuke anyone could sling at me. “They accept mink coats and fabulous jewelry as if they own the earth.” I feel his approval�
��at Zelda’s expense.
Days later Scott is yanked off The Women on the grounds that his approach is off the point. I believe the true reason is that Hunt Stromberg, the producer, can never settle on what he wants. Scott reports that the man is a drug addict. This is not, regrettably, column material.
Next up for Scott is a movie about Marie Curie, and he becomes even more evangelistic about this project, sure it’s the one that will ennoble his reputation as screenwriter. Again, he approaches his script as a moral treatise, presenting Dr. Curie as the prototype of a modern woman. This time he gets caught between Mummy and Daddy: one producer agrees with his approach, the other wants a formulaic love story.
“I’m once again at liberty, taken off another picture,” he says no more than a week after the assignment began, more astonished than hurt. “No one here wants to be corrupted by raw talent.” He writes to Scottie that, “I’m convinced they’re not going to make me czar of the industry right away like I thought. It’s all right, baby—life has humbled me. I am willing to compromise for assistant czar.”
Surely this will lead him straight to gin, I worry, and try to brainstorm a mounting defense. But there’s no need, because the future assistant czar gets lucky.
When Gone with the Wind won a Pulitzer last year, Scott sputtered, “If that’s literature, I’m Eleanor Roosevelt. The novel’s got no new characters, no new technique, no new observations, and no new examination of human emotion. I lament the soul who considers that woman’s book the supreme achievement of the human mind.”
The American public should clearly be reading Gatsby.
Now that I know what a Hail Mary pass is—thanks to umpteen Saturdays cheering on the UCLA Bruins with Scott—I realize he just got one from David O. Selznick, who asked for him to be traded to Warner Brothers to work on the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind. Scott may be the seventeenth screenwriter tapped. My lover, however, is eager for the project despite his outright condemnation of the novel when it won the Pulitzer the year prior. He argues, “The book is surprisingly honest and interesting—if workmanlike.”
