Skin Deep

by Alan Brennert

  “A mold? Why?”

  “Because we’ll be basing the makeup on your features, and from the mold we’ll be making rubber appliances for the other actors…”

  He took her to the makeup department and introduced her to the makeup artist, William Tuttle, a friendly man with dark hair, a mustache, and glasses. She sat in a chair as plaster was applied to the top half of her face—everything but her mouth and eyes—and then sat there as the plaster hardened. To keep her relaxed, Tuttle told her about some of the movies he’d worked on: Singin’ in the Rain, The Time Machine, North by Northwest, Jailhouse Rock with Elvis Presley…

  “You worked with Elvis?” she gasped, and Tuttle regaled her with Elvis stories until the plaster mold had hardened and was removed.

  By the end of the day Trina was exhausted but exhilarated. The limo got her home at seven o’clock; she fed Ace and was putting a Banquet chicken dinner in the oven when there was a knock on her door.

  She opened it to find Irving Pinkoff standing there, looking at her expectantly. “Well?”

  “I got the part!” she nearly shouted. “I’m going to be on television!”

  He embraced her proudly. “Good girl, I knew you would!”

  “I didn’t! I was terrified.”

  “Trina, this is so important what you’re doing,” he said, smiling. “For everyone on this pier, and … everywhere else.”

  “I wouldn’t be here—literally—if not for you, Irv. All of us.”

  “I’m the one whose life has been the richer for that,” he said, and hugged her again. Then, with a wink: “Break a leg, my dear.”

  * * *

  In that extra day of pre-production, Heyes coached Trina in the craft of acting for the camera—how to hit your marks and “not bump into the furniture”; how, in close-ups, to ignore the sound of the camera as film runs through the sprockets—and she quickly grew to trust this smart, talented, nice man. On a coffee break she asked what other shows he had worked on, and she was delighted to discover that he had written and directed some of the best episodes of her favorite show, Maverick.

  Trina now also had more time to memorize the script. It had been a long time since that class production of Junior Miss and even though “Eye of the Beholder” was shorter, it was a long way from a supporting role in a high school play. She sat at her dining table overlooking the beach and read—and re-read, and read again—not only her lines but those of the other actors, so she knew her cues.

  There was a standard day of rehearsal, at which Trina met her fellow actors—Maxine Stuart, playing the role of the bandaged Janet Tyler, and Donna Douglas, who would play Janet after the bandages came off; William Gordon, who played Janet’s doctor; George Keymas, who portrayed (on TV screens) the Leader of this conformist society; Edson Stroll, the handsome outcast; and Joanna Heyes, Doug’s wife, who had a small part as the reception nurse. They all seemed like lovely people and treated Trina like one of them—that is, a nat.

  The blocking was complicated, and Trina tried not to show her anxiety as she watched, listened, and followed instructions. Heyes’s plan was to not show the faces of any of the doctors and nurses, without making it seem as if that information was being deliberately withheld: “The way I see it is this is Janet Tyler’s viewpoint; she can’t see anyone around her, so the viewers can’t either. Here’s hoping they buy into that, however subconsciously.” This involved some fancy camerawork and cinematography: the set was shadowed, reflecting Janet’s “inner darkness,” and in certain scenes those shadows would obscure characters’ faces. Overhead shots would show only the top of their heads; in others, only the back of their heads, which looked perfectly normal, especially in shadowy rooms. Actors would also pass in front of one another, obscuring each other’s faces, or walk behind screens that revealed only a silhouette. She was relieved to see that even the seasoned cast found the blocking challenging to memorize.

  She had a seven o’clock call the next morning and when she showed up on the sound stage, she found the rest of the cast already there—they had been there for hours, having the makeup protheses applied. Trina stopped short when she saw seven people—nine, if you counted a couple of background extras—all of whom looked exactly like her. It was shocking, disorienting—and somehow highly amusing.

  “We look like a family reunion!” she cried out, and everyone, including crew, broke into laughter.

  Trina was in the first scene, playing opposite poor Maxine Stuart, her head wrapped in bandages. But it got off to a bumpy start when Trina flubbed her line in the first take, then missed her mark a few camera set-ups later, during a tracking shot. Feeling (or imagining) the eyes of everyone on the set on her, she quipped, “Who’s the joker that screwed up that shot?”—a familiar kind of joker self-deprecation around nats, but it got the laugh she sought, dissipating the tension.

  “Back to one!” the assistant director called out, and all the actors went back to their starting positions. And Trina made damn sure not to miss her mark again.

  During the next set-up, one of the extras—a young woman in her twenties whose makeup made her almost a twin of Trina’s—came up to her: “It’s no big deal, honey, everybody flubs a line now and then.”

  “Thanks,” Trina said, “but I just feel like such an amateur.”

  “They knew you were inexperienced when they hired you, but they wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t think you could deliver the goods.” This made Trina smile gratefully. The woman held out a hand. “I’m Suzie. Suzie Ludwick.”

  “Trina Nelson.”

  “This your first time on a movie lot?”

  “This is my first time anywhere, almost.”

  “Well you picked a good place for your first job. Listen, when we break for lunch, I’ll show you around the lot, okay?”

  None of the actors in “joker” makeup could eat a normal lunch, only milkshakes or chocolate malts they could sip through straws. (Maxine’s “bandages” had a zipper in back and she could remove it as needed.) Trina, of course, could eat anything she wanted—she took a sandwich off the craft services table as Suzie, sipping her milkshake, led her out of the soundstage and onto the MGM backlot. Trina felt self-conscious at first, but she quickly realized that everyone they passed—actors, crew carrying equipment, people driving golf carts to and from sound stages—none of them was paying Trina and Suzie the slightest attention, though they both looked as if they’d dropped in from Jupiter.

  “This is Hollywood,” Suzie said with a shrug. “Nothing’s real.”

  Trina basked in her newfound anonymity.

  Suzie took her over to Lot 2, one of six backlots that MGM owned, and into a genuine wonderland. First Trina marveled at a partial recreation of New York City’s waterfront docks and a ship’s gangway that led up to a convincing replica of the midsection of an ocean liner. Next, they walked down ersatz New England streets—a filling station, a malt shop, a treelined village square—that Trina recognized from old Andy Hardy movies. She passed the empty shells of typical American houses that achingly reminded Trina of her old neighborhood on Ashland Avenue, and stood there a moment, wishing this could be real, wishing one of the front doors would open and her parents would come out and wave to her. She quickened her pace as they passed a faux but depressing cemetery, to a delightfully French courtyard used in The Three Musketeers.

  They continued past a small-town railroad depot to an amazing mock-up of Grand Central Station (where a film crew was shooting in the working interior set). A few steps later Trina was on a Chinese street lined with pagodas, palaces, docks, even sampans floating on the manmade waterfront. Just beyond the Chinese street was a horseshoe-shaped space that at one end was a stunning re-creation of a street in Verona, Italy—fountains, ornate colonnades, mosaics—and at the other, the Moorish architecture of a street in Spain, which made Trina think of the Hippodrome, which itself was kind of a set.

  Trina was amazed at the sheer size, the vastness of these lots—and they only had t
ime to see half of what was here on Lot 2!

  “Well,” Trina joked, “I always did want to travel the world.”

  Suzie smiled a little sadly at that. “There’s lots more on this lot and the others. We can do this tomorrow at lunchtime too if you want.”

  “Yes, I’d like that.”

  Suzie glanced at her watch. “We’d better be getting back.”

  The rest of the day’s shoot proceeded smoothy, but before they broke for the day new script pages were distributed—and Trina quailed to see that it was a new scene between herself and Bill Gordon, who played the doctor. “Rod felt we needed someone who, in private at least, challenges the rules of conformity,” Doug Heyes explained to her, “and who better to do that than you?”

  Trina gulped but managed a thin smile. Oh God, more lines to memorize!

  The studio limo picked her up and whisked her home to the pier. A crowd of friends gathered around her, curious as to how the day had gone; she answered their questions as quickly as she could before hurrying into her apartment, feeding Ace, and studying her new lines over a pastrami sandwich. And as she read the lines, she understood what Doug had meant, and why she had to say them. She only hoped she could do justice to Rod’s dialogue.

  * * *

  The next day she arrived palpably nervous, even more so when she saw that her new scene with Bill Gordon was first up to shoot. Maxine Stuart tried to calm Trina’s jitters by telling her about her own acting debut, at the age of nineteen, in a short-lived (“We closed after a week!”) Broadway play called Western Waters. “I was so nervous the first night, I thought I was going to throw up on Van Heflin,” she admitted. “Today is your second day, you’re practically an old veteran.”

  Trina laughed along with her, grateful for her kindness.

  The new scene was set in a hospital “break room” where Trina’s nurse spoke sympathetically of her patient:

  “I’ve seen her face, Doctor, under those bandages … I’ve seen deeper than that pitiful, twisted lump of flesh.”

  Trina was glad the camera couldn’t see the tears in her eyes as she delivered this line.

  “I’ve seen her real face,” she went on. “It’s a good face. It’s a human face. What’s the dimensional visual difference between beauty and something we see as repellent? Skin deep? No, it’s more than that.”

  Then, with a righteous anger she didn’t need to fake, she implored, “Why, Doctor? Why shouldn’t people be allowed to be different?”

  When the Doctor warns that such talk is considered treason, the nurse backs off. “Don’t be concerned, Doctor, I—I’ll be all right.”

  A short scene, but for Trina it was as if Serling had seen inside her mind and put into words all of her pain, rage, and resentment.

  She had occasion to tell him this in person when Serling dropped by the set unannounced at the end of the day and said to her, “I hope you don’t have plans for lunch tomorrow. I’ve made reservations for us at the MGM commissary.” She looked startled and he explained, “It’s your last day. We need to commemorate it in appropriate style.”

  “But—I’m a joker,” she said.

  “So? Besides, when you walk in with Rod Serling, the kook who writes that kooky Twilight Zone, everyone will assume you’re in makeup and not give you a second thought. What do you say, are you up for it?”

  Though still nervous at the idea, Trina assured him she was.

  * * *

  Trina was expecting to be taken to a small studio cafeteria and was shocked to be ushered instead into a palatial dining room with high ceilings and arched doorways, the décor a resplendent chrome and green. The maître d’ widened his eyes when he saw Trina’s face but, as predicted, he then looked at Rod and smiled. “Ah, Mr. Serling. We have your table waiting for you and your guest.” He led them to a small table in the center of the packed crowd; on the way Trina was astonished to see sitting at tables such luminaries as Shirley MacLaine, Laurence Harvey, Lana Turner, and—oh my God, she thought, is that Bob Hope?

  A few of them stared back with evident revulsion at her face, but then, seeing Serling, they simply turned back to their lunches.

  She was so starstruck that Serling had to take her by the elbow and guide her into her chair. The maître d’ handed them both menus. Trina smiled at Serling and said, “I can’t believe I’m sitting here with all these stars. It’s like a fairy tale.”

  “I felt that way too, at first. I still like walking around the lot, seeing sets from movies I watched when I was a boy growing up in Binghamton, New York.” He opened up his menu. “I highly recommend the chicken soup, it’s the best this side of the Carnegie Deli.”

  Trina was even starstruck by the menu, featuring items like the “Elizabeth Taylor Salad” and the “Cyd Charisse Salad.” Though she was tempted by the “Barbecued Alaska Black Cod,” she knew this would be the only time in her life she would be able to utter the words “I’ll have the Elizabeth Taylor Salad,” and so she did. Serling ordered the corned beef sandwich on rye and a bottle of champagne.

  “We have ample reason to celebrate,” Rod said, lighting the latest in a succession of cigarettes. “The dailies are looking terrific and your performance is everything I’d hoped it would be. I think this will be a—”

  “Rod Serling!”

  A woman’s angry voice cut through the din of conversations around them. Trina looked up to see an elegantly dressed woman in her seventies, wearing a flamboyant hat and a mink stole wrapped around her shoulders like a game trophy, with bleached blonde hair.

  “How dare you disgrace this venerable old studio like this!” she accused.

  Serling looked surprised but said dryly, “Lovely to see you too, Hedda. Is that the pelt of one of your victims you’re wearing?”

  “Hedda”? Jesus, Trina thought, it was Hedda Hopper! A shiver of fear ran through Trina at this woman who destroyed careers and people with words like poison darts.

  Hedda ignored the insult and snapped, “So it’s true—you are employing a ‘joker’ in one of your trash television shows!”

  “Which one of your little spies ferreted out that information for you, Hedda?” Serling asked.

  “I have my sources, and they’re all good Americans. But this—it’s bad enough you’re breaking the blacklist by employing a joker, but to actually bring this revolting creature in here, while people are eating—”

  Trina’s hackles went up, her fear forgotten.

  “She’s an actress working for my company and MGM,” Serling shot back, “and she has every right to be here. And ‘revolting creature’ is an appellation that more aptly suits you, dear Hedda.”

  Hedda’s eyes popped: she was clearly not used to being talked back to with such amiable contempt. “Get this disgusting freak out of here now,” she demanded, “or I’ll call Sol Siegel so fast it will make your head spin!”

  Trina, enraged, found herself jumping to her feet and saying: “Oh, I see. No jokers allowed. Just like those Negroes in Greensboro, North Carolina, who were refused service at the lunch counter—is that it?”

  Hedda certainly didn’t expect the target of her venom to fight back and was momentarily at a loss for words.

  Trina was not. “Well I’ve got news for you, Miss Hopper,” Trina said evenly. “Right now, there are Negroes sitting at that lunch counter in Greensboro, as is their legal right. Just as I have a legal right to be sitting here with Mr. Serling. And I have no intention of leaving until I’ve had my lunch—and maybe dessert, too!”

  Unexpectedly, Trina heard—applause.

  She looked around and saw at least a dozen people—among them Shirley MacLaine and Lana Turner—on their feet and applauding in solidarity with her.

  Trina was stunned—and touched. She nodded at the people applauding her, then slowly sat back down.

  Serling was grinning at this turn of events. “Now, Hedda,” he said, “if you don’t mind, as you yourself noted—people are eating.”

  Hedda, fuming, stared da
ggers at him but said nothing, just turned and stalked away, out of the commissary.

  Serling, still grinning, said, “Trina, that was brilliant. And it took extraordinary courage.”

  Trina shook her head. “No, I was just pissed off.”

  Serling laughed. “That’s what courage is sometimes—being pissed off at what’s not right.”

  “Now I’m worrying, though. Rod, the whole country reads what that woman writes. She could do real damage to you and your show.”

  “I doubt it. Her rants against Dalton Trumbo and Spartacus haven’t stopped the filming. In any event, it’s worth the risk if it breaks the joker blacklist as Spartacus has broken the Red Scare blacklist.”

  Trina smiled. “You’re the brave one, I think.”

  Serling shook his head and took a draw off his cigarette. “I’m not doing this for altogether altruistic reasons, Trina. Yes, I want the blacklist to end, but also—” He thought a moment and went on, “Look, we all like to think that writers write because they have something to say that is truthful and honest and pointed and important. And I suppose I subscribe to that, too. But God knows when I look back over my career thus far, I’m hard-pressed to come up with anything that’s important. Some things are literate, some things are interesting, some things are classy, but very damn little is important.

  “You—what we’re doing together—this may be important. I hope it helps you and others like you. Someday, at the end of my time on this earth, that would be a fine comfort, to have been a part of this.”

  Trina, moved, picked up her champagne glass and held it aloft. Serling took his shot glass of scotch—and they toasted to that.

  * * *

  At the end of the shoot, the cast and crew surprised Trina with a goodbye cake prepared by craft services and broke open yet another bottle of champagne. Maxine Stuart told her it was an honor to have worked with her, which touched Trina deeply. Everyone wished her well and Suzie promised to drop by the pier between gigs—and she made good on her promise several times, she and Trina eating fish and chips in one of the little cafes. She even came to the viewing party the night in November that “Eye of the Beholder” aired. The Menagerie’s manager closed the club for a “private party” and most of the pier’s residents, many, like Anonyme, clad in festive masks, jammed inside to watch the episode. It was a powerful story and Trina was relieved that she hadn’t embarrassed herself—she’d held her own with more seasoned actors. And she was proud to be the first joker in a network television series.