‘Yes, Larry … we’ll get married.’
He did all that his promise to take care of her implied. He asked Grimsby for a raise, and got it because One by One was a success, and Larry had helped to make it so. They got the marriage licence immediately, and Larry made Laura quit her job at Auguste’s. She was married in a beige suit which Larry had chosen and paid for, and for the first time she saw what an expensive garment could do for her. Larry judged fabric, style and colour with an expert, professional eye.
‘From now on,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to be properly dressed. A face like yours doesn’t need decking out to distract attention from it ‒ everything has to be plain and good.’
‘What’s wrong with the clothes l have now?"
‘They’re terrible ‒ just terrible,’ he said. ‘They look like ice-cream sundaes.’
‘And who’ll pay for all this?’ she demanded sullenly.
‘I will, of course. We’ll economise by staying on in my apartment, but I don’t want you to put your foot outside the door unless you look as an actress should look.’
She shrugged irritably. ‘All right, Svengali. But I don’t know what you expect me to turn into.’
‘Now shut up, and pay attention, Laura,’ he said amiably. ‘You want to be an actress? Right! Then we’ll manufacture an actress if we haven’t got a born one. You’ll have to forget all the junk you learned in Hollywood.’
He enrolled her with Goodman for dramatic lessons, and with Joe Aaronson for voice training ‒ both of them the best, he said. He also sent her to a ballet teacher for deportment. She was abruptly plunged into a schedule of practice and classes that seemed much more exhausting than the work at Auguste’s.
She was learning to wear clothes, and to choose them with an accurate image of how she wanted to look firmly in her mind. Larry persuaded her to let her hair grow, and sent her to a good hairdresser who coloured it to a dark honey which brought out warm tones in her skin, in place of the white, chalky look it had had. Over the months she saw a new shell being laid over the old one, and what she saw pleased her; but underneath she felt that she was still the ill-trained, messy blonde who had come from Los Angeles. She was afraid it still showed through.
Larry’s routine had not altered with marriage. He still ate every night at Auguste’s, still worked until seven or eight o’clock every morning.
She usually fell asleep on their wall-bed while Larry worked; she fell asleep with a book in her hands. When she wasn’t practising, or learning a part, Larry made her read. She read plays, novels, biographies and poetry that came from the bulging, untidy shelves that filled one wall of their room. Larry expected her to be literate by his own standards.
‘For God’s sake!’ she protested wearily. ‘What are you trying to do with me? Look, my father hacked a cab all his life, and my mother waited table at the hamburger place on Vine and Hollywood. I never even heard of these people,’ she pointed at the titles, ‘before I came here.’
‘In the theatre you can be anyone or anything ‒ just so long as you can convince other people. What you started with doesn’t matter. And what’s in those books is part of your stock-in-trade.’
She was only half-satisfied, but she did what he told her, because she didn’t know what else to believe. Their lives were dedicated and hard-working. After a year of it, Laura began to wonder if it was to any purpose. One by One settled down for its second season on Broadway.
Then, just after the New Year, Larry told her that he was planning to invest some money in the summer theatre at Hyde Park on the condition that she was taken on in the company. She heard the news with an overwhelming relief and an obedient gratitude to Larry; the thought of the summer gave some purpose and direction to her studies, and she worked harder than before.
In the spring the bookings for One by One began to fall off, and no one thought it could last through another summer. By May the closing notices were up. Larry announced that his play was ready to show to Grimsby.
Until then, he had refused to let Laura read it. She took the copy he gave her now, and knew that she was afraid to start. The fact that Larry considered this play, his fifth, worthy of presenting to a Broadway producer was a final step; if he was mistaken about the play, then he was also mistaken in his whole idea of the theatre. Their future lay in this thin typescript in her hands. She was too frightened to be able to read it with detachment. Some of it barely seemed to make sense to her, and she knew it was because panic was blinding her to whatever meaning it possessed. Finally, she confessed it to Larry.
He shrugged. ‘You’re too close to it, Baby. Just put it out of your head until Grimsby can get around to reading it.’
Laura had to leave for Hyde Park before Grimsby read it. Now that One by One had closed, Larry was working full time writing another play, and trying to sell his latest short story to tide him over the summer. Laura was scheduled for small parts in five productions at Hyde Park, and on the strength of Larry’s investment, she was given the plum of playing Alexander in The Little Foxes; the starring roles would be played by the famous husband-and-wife team of Vera Terraine and John Langston. They had been starring on Broadway and all over the States since the twenties, and in certain plays their names meant a sold-out house. Laura grew afraid even at the thought of appearing on the same stage with them.
‘Play it for all it’s worth,’ was all Larry said, ‘and don’t let Vera bitch you up.’
She went to Hyde Park alone, though Larry promised to come up for each dress rehearsal and opening. She missed him in many strange ways; after eighteen months with Goodman and Aaronson she was no longer raw and did not completely lack confidence, but she missed Larry’s comforting solidarity, the strength and sureness which his knowledge of the theatre always transmitted to her. It was something of a disappointment when he came for the first opening to find him preoccupied. Grimsby had read the play, and was showing cautious excitement about it; the long negotiations were about to start. But Larry was pleased with her handling of the small part, and she lived through the rest of the week with mixed feelings of pleasure and hope.
When he came to Hyde Park for the next show, Larry told her that Grimsby had said he definitely wanted to produce the play in the fall or winter. Part of the terms Larry was fighting for was to get the leading feminine role for Laura. Grimsby was unbudging in his refusal, even though Larry pointed out that if he got stars for the two male leads the woman’s part was written so that it could be carried by the two strong male roles. Laura was beautiful, and sufficiently trained, he said.
Grimsby didn’t want her, and said so flatly, and he might never have changed his mind if it hadn’t been for the notices of the Hyde Park revival of The Little Foxes. Vera Terraine and John Langston guaranteed it some notice in the Press, and they gave their usual polished performances. Perhaps it was Laura’s freshness that accounted for the interest in her, or perhaps it was that Larry’s near-desperation at the deadlock in the talks with Grimsby somehow sparked her to a tremendous effort. She played without self-consciousness, determined to get notice and praise from the critics for Larry to carry back to Grimsby. She got what she wanted, and at the end of the week, Grimsby came to Hyde Park to see her. He agreed, even then reluctantly, to sign her for the part.
She went through the rest of the summer in a daze, aware, now that the big part was over, of a new humility, a frightened knowledge of how close she had been to missing her chance.
She snatched greedily at all the experience those weeks could give her, not even minding the chores of scenery painting, and the mending the wardrobe mistress passed out. She was wrapped up in the thought of Larry’s play, and it was a shock to have suddenly the invitation to play again the part of Alexandra when Vera Terraine and John Langston did a four-week revival of The Little Foxes on Broadway in September.
It was the tourist season, and the audience for those four weeks were out-of-towners, drawn by the familiarity of the play and the fame of Terraine and L
angston. Here, on her own stamping-ground, Vera Terraine did not permit Laura to gather more than the usual two-line mention from the critics, but what was said was good, and her one Broadway appearance permitted Grimsby to give her star billing when Larry’s play opened in late November.
The playbills read:
ROD CHANDLER AND MARCUS NORTH
and introducing Laura Carroll
in
‘The Leaven’
a play by
LAWRENCE WARDE
Laura had never been so frightened in her life. The weeks of rehearsal before the try-out in Philadelphia were a nightmare, but no one except Larry knew it. She was helped by Rod Chandler and Marcus North, who both had excellent roles, and didn’t mind helping her to look good ‒ because they could afford to. Their task was made easy by the way Larry had written her part; it was Laura herself, with very few differences. The play did not depend upon Laura; all she had to do was to turn in a competent, professional job.
From the Philadelphia try-out, and the Broadway opening, Chandler and North got rave notices; Laura emerged very creditably. She was praised for her graceful performance, and her sense of timing. Two of the critics mentioned her excellent delivery, her clear, low-pitched voice that carried to every seat in the house … ‘It was a pleasure to welcome Miss Carroll to Broadway. She will decorate it for many seasons to come.’
But the excitement of the reviews was for Lawrence Warde. He would be, they predicted, one of America’s major dramatists.
Laura and Larry came home to the third floor walk-up after Arthur Grimsby’s party, clutching their bundle of newspapers; they stood in the centre of the room and hugged each other in relief and tired ecstasy. After the nervous glitter of the opening and the party, this shabby, frayed room seemed warm and comforting. They knew, of course, that it was part of a world that they were leaving, and, just for that moment, they could almost regret it.
II
The Leaven ran on Broadway for two seasons. A month before it closed, Larry asked Laura for a divorce.
It might have been easier for Laura to understand if she had suspected what was going to happen. There might have been some steps she could have taken, even futile ones to make at least a gesture of fighting to keep Larry. But when he told her, she knew at once that it was too late to do anything. She had lived with him complacently, and she had lost him before she knew it.
The Leaven had been sold to the movies, but there was no way, this time, that Larry could secure for Laura her original role. The part was earmarked for a star already under contract to the film company, and it was being altered and built up to conform with the public idea of the kind of woman she was. Afterwards, when Larry recalled this, he reminded Laura that she had blamed him for her failure to get the movie role.
The Leaven was produced successfully in London. Larry had gone over for the opening. The two weeks he had planned to stay stretched into nearly two months. He wrote her that he was working on parts of the first draft of his new play with the producer. Laura was rehearsing a television show and she barely had time to notice his absence.
He came back and finished the new play. It was then she found out that it contained no part for her.
‘Laura, be reasonable,’ he said. ‘I can’t write with only one person in mind all the time. There’ll be other parts offered to you when The Leaven ends … any producer who didn’t use you would be losing a lot of publicity.’
The second play opened a couple of months before The Leaven closed. It was a better play than The Leaven, and the critics’ notices sold the house out for months ahead. Larry had his name on two theatres on Broadway. He went to London almost immediately to prepare for the opening there. When he came back he asked her for a divorce.
‘Why?’ She stared at him, helpless and shocked.
‘There’s someone else I want to marry.’
‘Who?’ She cast around wildly in her mind seeking the woman, and knew at once that it was no one in New York.
‘Her name is Mary Blair. She’s Harvey Cantrill’s secretary.’
It took her a second to remember that Cantrill was his London producer. ‘That’s why you stayed …’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Why not? Did you notice I wasn’t here?’
He was about to turn away. Suddenly her sense of outrage crumbled; she was left only bewilderment. The controlled voice that was one of her chief assets on the stage, wavered and broke. ‘Larry … Larry, why? You loved me once … I know you loved me.’
He came back and faced her. ‘Yes … that’s true. I did. I loved you very much, Laura. But I was mistaken.’
‘How? What do you mean?’
He gestured, groping for words. ‘I had an ideal … an image, if you like. I saw you as a raw material which had the potential of perfection. I wanted to mould you … I wrote you into The Leaven as the woman I thought you would become. I made a stupid mistake.’
She burst out hotly, ‘Well, is it my fault that I turned out to be me instead of some crazy dream you had.’
‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s not your fault, Laura. I handed you over to teachers and I saw them shape your body and your voice and your face. You were an apt pupil, and you learned well. I thought that I could teach you the other things … wit, wisdom, kindliness. I thought that you would love me. That was pretty stupid. I should be writer enough to know that love doesn’t come because you wish it would.’
‘I haven’t cheated on you,’ she raged. ‘You know there hasn’t been anyone else, even though there’ve been chances … and you were always working and never came to the theatre …’
‘Just not cheating isn’t enough, Laura. A marriage needs something a little more active than that.’ He flung out his hands quickly. ‘Well, it was my fault, I suppose. I taught you all the external tricks of the theatre, and how to be a success ‒ and then I stood by and watched you become absorbed by hairdressers and dressmakers and photographers and all the other paraphernalia of being a star. I started it, and I didn’t know how to stop it.’
‘The trouble with you, Larry, is that you really didn’t want anything at all for me ‒ you didn’t want my success, and you didn’t like it. You just wanted me at home sitting at your feet.’
‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m marrying Mary Blair.’
When the divorce went through she had her settlement from Larry, which was a generous one, and which he gave ungrudgingly. There were also the two mink coats, and the jewellery he had given her. What he couldn’t give her was a conviction of her own talent ‒ her ability to go on without him.
She felt a pang of envy and regret when she read that the second play had been awarded the New York Critics Award and then the Pulitzer Prize. But the bleakest day was the one when she saw Larry and a woman she knew must be Mary Blair at lunch at Sardi’s. Mary Blair was almost plain, with her brown hair dragged back too severely from her thin face; she would not have attracted attention anywhere. She was totally absorbed in Larry, and as they left the restaurant he linked his arm confidingly in hers. Laura felt a sense of desolation as she watched them.
III
Almost the last thing Larry had said to her was ‘Wear the right clothes … and choose your parts carefully.’
She had reason to think about this often. In the two years after the divorce she had appeared in two plays on Broadway that had flopped, and another that had tried-out in Washington, and had never come into New York. It was easier to pick the clothes than the parts, and after two flops the parts weren’t offered by the top producers any more. She sat in her apartment and waited for the telephone to ring ‒ after starring on Broadway it was no longer possible to call hopefully at producers’ offices; the phone rang less and less frequently.
There was work for her to do, however. Television was booming, and the medium was an insatiable maw for performers and writers. She appeared in the afternoon matinée shows, and the night-time half-hour dramas, and her agent Al Robert
s would call all the newspaper television critics in the hope that they would catch the show, and give Laura a mention. Sometimes her picture appeared on the television page of the evening papers. The shows were shot from vast bare studios, and from draughty legit theatres that had fallen to the new popularity of television. Half a dozen times she flew out to Los Angeles to do a show that originated from the great new factories for television that the networks had built out there. It was work, but there was no magic in it. Her training still stayed with her, and she did a satisfactory, if not notable job.
She heard that Larry was having another play produced in the fall. By this time she was desperate enough to call him and ask if there was a part in it for her. He told her that there wasn’t, and he made a fair pretence of being regretful over it.
It was after the talk with Larry that she decided to tell Al Roberts that she would take the job he had found for her, to do a series of filmed television commercials for the appliance division of Amtec. She had no illusions about what this meant ‒ it meant that she would become a glamorised saleswoman of stoves, dishwashers and refrigerators, and that it was very likely the end of any hope of going back into the theatre. But it needed money to support an apartment in the East Fifties and the kind of life that went with it. The Amtec offer was very handsome, and it was a three-year exclusive contract. It was three years in which she could afford East Fiftieth Street and the mink coats.
With what was left of her time after Amtec had had its cut, she studied with Goodman. It was a gesture of desperation, as she felt herself slipping farther and farther away from the place she wanted to go. She knew that she was only buying herself the illusion of being an actress, and that in the public’s mind she was now firmly identified with refrigerators, but she told herself that Amtec paid her well enough to be able to afford the indulgence. And she bought and read many of the books and plays that had been on Larry’s shelves, and which she had not had time to read before the divorce.
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