Two Birds, One Feather: The Lives and Times of Lorewyn & Rhianyn in America

by C. J. Pearson

  “Where’s your husband now?” Lorewyn asked.

  “Oh, Charlie’s doing what he always does,” the woman answered, seeming a bit put off. “He’s on the city council… he’s helping the Mexican families who live in the barrio north of town. Some of the men work for him. He’s…” She paused, reaching over to give a reassuring hug to her son who had started whimpering softly.

  Lorewyn saw the company sign on the side of the truck. Anaheim Truck & Transfer. She offered a smile to the boy, then turned back to the woman.

  ‘Your husband sounds like a good man,” Lorewyn said. “And my sense is that he handed you the keys and let you handle business here, getting you and your son out, because he knew you’re a force to be reckoned with.”

  The woman grinned hesitantly, but nodded. “You know, I’m one of the very first women dentists in California. Graduated from USC. But they never taught truck mechanics in dental school!”

  Lorewyn gave her a pat on the arm. “Well, you’re in good company. I’m one of the very first stuntwomen in Hollywood… and fortunately I’ve had some minimal experience on set with vehicles. Come on, let’s get this beast rolling!”

  The woman tried to put the truck in gear again, feeling more confident now, but the transmission was still jammed, even with the clutch in. Lorewyn had seen something like this before.

  “These old lorries,” she commented. “If they’re parked and left in gear, it sometimes puts a lot of pressure on the pin. It’s like trying to force a door open with a desk pushed up against it on the other side. We just need to give the truck a jolt, even a couple inches on the chassis… that should release it.”

  The woman looked down. The water was still high. They’d be up to their shoulders if they dropped to the ground to shove on the back end of the truck. “How are we going to do that?” she asked.

  Lorewyn saw her point. She looked back on the flat bed behind where she was still standing on the running board. The front end of the bed had a guard between the flat and the cab. “I have an idea.”

  She moved back and checked the guard. It was a study board. Lorewyn called out to the woman.

  “Hold down the clutch and prepare to throw it into gear! When I say now, shove the stick into first, start the engine, and pop the clutch… got it?”

  “Got it!” the woman called back.

  Lorewyn took a few steps back until she was at the tail of the bed. Then, springing forward, she jack-knifed her legs in a forward running kick and slammed the guard board with her feet… dropping to the bed a moment later.

  “Now!” she yelled as she kicked with all her might.

  Sure enough, the truck jolted just enough to trip the pin. The gear stick moved. The woman hit the ignition and popped the clutch. The truck gave a rumble, started, then began sputtering.

  “Choke it!” Lorewyn shouted again. The woman yanked on the choke lever and the sputtering gave way to a steady roar.

  “We did it!” the woman exclaimed in triumph. Lorewyn laughed in excitement, picking herself up, and dusting off her sailor middy trousers.

  “Let’s get to higher ground!” she exclaimed in return.

  A half hour later, the truck was moving up into the hills near Villa Park. Evidence from recent mudslides on account of the storms could be seen, but there was no standing flood water to speak of. It had initially just been Lorewyn, the woman, and her son… but in that half hour they had managed to pick up a few more.

  They had passed a group of citrus fruit pickers who had actually climbed the trees to evade the flood and who were calling out for help as they saw the truck pass. Lorewyn heard them and answered.

  “Espera, vamos!” And then as the truck got close to the trees, “Salto!”

  A half dozen men leaped onto the bed of the truck, thanking Lorewyn in Spanish. One of the men gave her his vaquero hat. The truck then passed a family stranded and standing on the roof of their car. Lorewyn helped them onto the bed as well, pulling a boy who was about ten over as well.

  When the boy got situated, he noticed the hat on Lorewyn. Marveling at her physical prowess in helping people aboard the truck, he finally spoke.

  “You’re like the Lone Ranger’s wife!”

  Lorewyn just laughed good-naturedly, taking the hat off her own head and placing it on the boy’s. The migrant workers laughed as well, applauding.

  “Si, vaquero!” they said.

  “I don’t think the Lone Ranger has a wife,” Lorewyn answered the boy. “But I know he has a good friend, Tonto, and rides on a beautiful white horse.”

  “Silver!” the boy exclaimed. “I know… I listen to the radio program every week! I’ll bet you can ride and shoot and do all sorts of things too!”

  Now Lorewyn just grinned, giving the boy a knowing wink. “Next time I run into you, I’ll be sure to have a silver bullet on me to give to you.”

  Lorewyn was able to find a working telephone and called Martin Field. Rhianyn, having the foresight and good instincts that she did, had left a message with the county aviation dispatcher, just in case Lorewyn called, telling her to meet her at the west side of Loma Ridge as soon as possible, which wasn’t far away at all. The woman drove her to the rendezvous. Lorewyn said her farewells.

  “Today was quite an adventure,” she stated. “Thank you so much for your help… you and your son both!”

  “It’s us who should be thanking you!” the woman clarified. She was holding her son now, who was definitely in better spirits. “Jimmy, can you say thank you to the nice lady who helped us?” she encouraged.

  “Thank you, Lady,” Jimmy said in his small two-year old slightly slurred voice.

  Lorewyn chuckled delightfully and gave the kid a friendly ruffle of his hair with her hand. “You know, I don’t think I ever got your name,” she said to the woman.

  “It’s Sarah,” she replied. “And thank you again. I’ve never met a stuntwoman before. You helped a lot of people today. Whoever your husband is, he’s most certainly a lucky man.”

  Lorewyn didn’t say anything to rock the boat, of course. She simply responded with a sincere, “I’m the lucky one.” She waved goodbye and walked over to meet Rhianyn, who was just pulling up in an aviation truck.

  “Next time I need my teeth checked, I’ll know who to call!”

  CHAPTER 12

  Lorewyn received a letter about six months after that flood. It was fan mail! And it was addressed to “Ariel Archer.” Lorewyn hadn’t used that alias for nearly a decade, not since she and Rhianyn had left New York and moved to California. How had this person tracked her down with that name?

  Intrigued, she opened the letter. It was handwritten. “Miss Archer: I recently uncovered a story you wrote and had published in an early issue of Hugo Gernsback’s periodical Amazing Stories. The story was titled Beneath the Surface. I’ve been trying to contact you regarding this story, and I hope this letter reaches you. I love science fiction and have been writing my own. Your story is one of the best I’ve ever read and has inspired me to write more. I’m including a draft of something I wrote. I learned that you were an editor at Scribner’s Publishing many years ago. Could you please read this draft and give me any input you think would be helpful? I know I’m young, just 18, but we all start somewhere, right? I’m hoping you can offer me some guidance as I’m getting started. With gratitude, Isaac Asimov.”

  The letter had a Columbia University return address, postmarked August 4, 1938. It had taken a month for this letter to reach her! Lorewyn just smiled to herself and began some “tracking down” of her own. I’ll do one better than that, young Isaac, she thought.

  She read the draft and made the phone call a week later. A young man with a Yiddish-flavored Brooklyn accent, the kind Lorewyn had heard often while living in the Williamsburg neighborhood years before, answered. Lorewyn modified her own voice a bit. This would be okay. No visual. No identity breach. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to travel back to New York just to do a memory wipe!

  They
spoke for a bit, and Lorewyn gave the young writer her opinion of his work, very complimentary. She was about to end the call when he asked her one more question.

  “Miss Archer, you more or less just disappeared a few years ago. Did you ever write anything else? I wasn’t able to find anything other than your one story. With your talent, I’d thought you’d have a lot more published.”

  Lorewyn considered this. He was a most unusual young man, no doubt.

  “I never got into story writing to become famous or widely published,” she replied. “My boss at Scribner’s, Max Perkins, inspired me to give it a try. I got lucky. I wrote something catchy, and it got printed. I read your draft. You’ve got more than luck on your side, a solid foundation on which to build. Keep writing. I have a feeling you’ll be famous and widely published before long!”

  Although Lorewyn couldn’t see his expression through the phone, obviously, she was sure he was grinning. There was a slight crackle from the connection, then he spoke again.

  “Even if I’m not, I’ll likely be famous after I’m dead. That’s the way with a lot of writers, isn’t it? They don’t become well-known until they’re dead.”

  Lorewyn chuckled slightly at his morbid sense of humor. “Well, some writers, some people in general, live quite a lot longer than you’d imagine.”

  Autumn 1939 rolled around, and Lorewyn’s contract with Warner Bros. expired. It was not renewed. Jack Warner offered a reasonable explanation.

  “The studio’s making cuts all around,” he explained to Lorewyn in his office. “I’ll be straight with you, Liv, I’d love to keep you on board. The actresses think you’re top-notch to work with, and so do I. But you know what’s going on in Europe right now, I’m sure. We all know Roosevelt’s trying to keep us out of it, but Hollywood’s preparing for the worst. We think it’s reasonable that a lot of our younger actors will be called on to fight… and if that happens, we’ll be making less pictures, less revenue… you get the idea. The bottom line is that the studio has to trim the budget, and people consider stuntwomen to be the most expendable, regardless of how good you are.”

  Lorewyn understood, of course. In fact, she and Rhianyn had been talking about it one morning after reading the headlines in The Los Angeles Times.

  “Hitler’s invaded Poland,” Rhianyn observed. “Another war starting in Europe, Yellowfeather. I can’t believe it. I honestly thought after what those countries went through in the last great war over there that ended 20 years ago… I don’t get it. And with improvements in artillery and aviation? A lot of people are going to die… a lot.”

  “I know,” Lorewyn agreed. “It’s horrible. America stayed out of the last war for a time, but got pulled into it nonetheless. I don’t know if we can manage that again. The things they’re saying about the Nazi regime and what Hitler’s doing over there… I don’t even want to think about it. We might not have a choice, Blackbird.”

  “Well hell,” Rhianyn exclaimed, pouring her wife another cup of tea. “If they really want to stop Hitler, Mussolini, and their whole gang, they should just send the two of us to the front lines. We have plenty of experience dealing with arrogant fascist bastards, don’t we?” She grinned, clinking her glass against Lorewyn’s tea cup.

  Lorewyn tried freelancing for a while, but the studios were hesitant hiring non-contracted agents, especially a woman doing the kind of work Lorewyn was doing. She even tried with RKO Pictures again, thinking that her work with King Kong years earlier might be worth something and offering her services as a double for Virginia Vale in Legion of the Lawless. But there had been some management changes at RKO since Lorewyn’s days dangling off the set of the Empire State Building and the only response she got on the phone was “Alivia Chambers… who’s that?”

  She did catch a break in 1940, however, with 20th Century Fox. It was a providential piece of timing, really. Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell had been paired up in two films back to back, Brigham Young and The Mark of Zorro. There were some scenes where Darnell needed a double, and she was only 17 at the time, having joined the Fox line-up of young actresses faking her age as being older. Her true age had been discovered, of course, but she was already under contract and making films, gaining in popularity. Being so young, finding a suitable double was challenging. The producer and studio head at the time, Darryl Zanuck, was looking for someone who could pull it off. His film editor on the pictures, Robert Bischoff, pulled him aside at one point and made the following recommendation.

  “What about that gal who doubled for de Havilland in Midsummer and Robin Hood? She was good… and young-looking!”

  So, Zanuck tracked down “Alivia Chambers” and hired her for the two pictures. He was impressed with her work and contracted her with the studio in early 1941. Lorewyn kept her age-appearance-adjustment magic a complete secret, of course, the side effect being that Fox studio’s make-up department gained a reputation for being able to do miracles, a reputation that make-up artist John Chambers (some assumed a relation) lived up to 25 years later when he designed the pointed ears worn by Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock on Star Trek and the ape facial prosthetics worn by the actors who portrayed simian characters on The Planet of the Apes.

  Lorewyn was a big fan of the ears.

  “We’ve been in an apartment for the past 20 years,” Rhianyn stated one day in the Summer of 1941. “First in Brooklyn, now here in Burbank. I’ve been thinking maybe we should look into buying a house. I mean, you’re on contract now with Fox studios, I’ve been with Hughes for nearly a decade. We’re in a good place financially, and thanks to FDR’s New Deal initiatives the past few years, the price of housing is down. I think this is a good time to go for it.”

  Lorewyn agreed, and the two of them started checking into the real estate market. There were some nice parts of the Los Angeles area at the time that were simply out of their price range, but homes north and east of the city were doable. Their biggest obstacle was, of course…

  “Do either of you have a husband to co-sign?” was a common question.

  “We’ll need proof of your relationship as cousins to establish a note of co-ownership,” was another comment.

  Lorewyn and Rhianyn were both frustrated but were determined to find a way in early 1940’s America to own a home and live in it together. They found an ally, however, in a Japanese-American real estate agent named Norman Takei who ran a business with his wife Emily on San Pedro Street near downtown.

  “I’m used to dealing with Asian customers mostly,” Mr. Takei explained, “and especially those who have difficulty buying a home because of their circumstances. I know how to cut through some red tape… we can make this work for you ladies, I’m quite sure.” His fees were reasonable, and Lorewyn and Rhianyn enlisted his help.

  They found a modest but comfortable house in Toluca Lake and closed the deal shortly after Labor Day. It was small but more than enough for the two of them. Norman and Emily came to see Lorewyn and Rhianyn on their move-in day with some traditional Japanese housewarming gifts.

  “Fresh bread so that you may never go hungry,” Emily offered, handing them a basket with the items, “A straw broom to sweep away evil, and a bottle of wine to bring your new household happiness.”

  Rhianyn took the items, thanking them. Lorewyn’s attention had been caught by the presence of a boy about four years of age who had come with Norman and Emily.

  “Our son, George,” Norman said, introducing him.

  George had been carrying something and handed it to Lorewyn. Lorewyn knelt to receive it. She was handed a single blooming purple-colored foxglove.

  For a moment, Lorewyn just froze. She placed her other hand, the one not holding the flower, on her mouth as if stifling a cry. Her eyes began to tear up, but she wiped them away as quickly as she could.

  “Oh my!” she exclaimed softly, bringing the flower closer to her and speaking to the boy. “This is beautiful! Thank you so much… this is my favorite flower.”

  “There’s room in t
he yard for a garden,” Emily said. “We thought this might be a nice token to get started.”

  Lorewyn was speechless, finally standing up again and looking at Rhianyn happily. Rhianyn spoke to the Takei’s.

  “My cousin and I are both very happy,” she offered in closing. “You’ve been so good to us… arigato.” She gave a slight respectful bow.

  The family left, and Lorewyn and Rhianyn went inside their new home. The tears of joy, memory, and love that Lorewyn had been holding back suddenly came forth like a wellspring, and she found herself embracing Rhianyn, her beloved wife, in the house that they could now call theirs.

  ***

  “… Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…”

  The voice of Franklin D. Roosevelt came through the radio in the living room as Lorewyn and Rhianyn sat on the couch together, their hands in each other’s, their faces set like stone… just listening.

  It had happened. Pearl Harbor, near the city of Honolulu on the Hawaiian Islands, the day before. A Sunday morning. The planes had attacked without warning. The President was calling on Congress to declare war on Japan.

  They finished listening to the President’s address, then Lorewyn stood up, walked over to the radio console, and turned it off. She came back over to the couch and sat back down, leaning up against Rhianyn.

  “America’s fight in the war in the Pacific is beginning,” Rhianyn whispered, soberly. “But it won’t stop there.”

  “No, it won’t,” Lorewyn agreed. “War is ugly business… for everyone.”

  “Should we be thankful that things were delayed this long?” Rhianyn wondered.