The Air You Breathe

by Frances De Pontes Peebles

  * * *

  —

  The star of Fruity Cutie Girl was nicknamed “Saint Blondie.” Sofia Salvador’s costumes were costlier and more elaborate than the blonde’s, her musical numbers more complicated, her trailer more luxurious. Everyone on set knew this, but Saint Blondie still maintained her authority. There were whispers that she was a favorite of Zanuck’s, and visited his office every afternoon for a roll on his enormous couch. This meant that even the film’s temperamental director was forced to cater to her whims. She kept a swear box on set and every time someone swore, Saint Blondie made them pay a nickel.

  “I’m not paying a goddamn centavo,” Kitchen said loudly, in Portuguese. “She doesn’t know whether I’m talking about the movie or her ass.”

  “And what an ass it is,” Tiny said. “Let’s make a bet: by the time filming’s over, I’ll get Saint Blondie to swear up a storm with me, in the trailer. Shit, afterward we’ll even write a song about it.”

  “I’ve got the first line,” Vinicius said, “Once there was an Ice Queen who froze off Tiny’s tiny.”

  Kitchen held up his little finger. “Instead of a pinto, now I’ve got a Popsicle!”

  Saint Blondie looked over her shoulder at us. “Shhhhh!” she hissed.

  Tiny winked at her. The starlet’s eyes widened. She crossed her arms and stalked off, bumping into Graça on her way out.

  “Who put the bug in Saint Blondie’s ass?” Graça asked.

  “Tiny,” Noel said.

  “A bug’s not what I’d imagined putting in there,” Tiny whispered, and we all erupted into giggles, hanging off one another’s arms and slapping one another’s shoulders, not caring about the crew and cast around us, like the old days.

  When we arrived on set the next day, there were signs taped to our trailers’ doors, propped on the coffee cart, and stapled to the cork message board outside the set’s bathrooms.

  This is an ENGLISH ONLY set.

  Support our troops! Be a proud American!

  That was the day we were slated to film our longest, most complex musical number. The whole musical sequence—all fifteen minutes of it—would be shot using only one camera, which moved on a rail. Once the singing and dancing got rolling, there could be no stopping until the very end.

  The Blue Moon boys wore simple black pants and white shirts, open at the necks. Vinicius and Little Noel sat in the makeup trailer for an hour while the artists bronzed their faces and chests. When they emerged, they were as orange as carrots. On a normal day we would’ve teased the boys for wearing makeup. But on that particular day, we were all digesting the meaning of the “English Only” signs. Instead of teasing, we sat quietly and waited.

  Graça appeared beside us. Her dark blue dress was slit all the way up her thigh. Fist-sized strawberries covered in sequins were sewn along the length of her skirt and dangled over her bosom. Two muscular, shirtless extras appeared. Behind them, an animal trainer guided a pair of enormous oxen onto the set. They pulled a cart filled with fake bananas.

  “Miss Salvador,” a production assistant called. “I’ll help you up.”

  “Where?” Graça asked.

  “Here,” the production assistant said, pointing to the cart.

  “We go there?” Graça asked.

  “Oh, no!” the assistant said. “Just you. The band pulls the cart.”

  We were all quiet. Graça looked at me.

  “It says nothing in the script about a cart, about animals,” I said to the PA.

  “They’re perfectly safe,” the animal trainer said.

  The PA smiled. “Sofia Salvador’s hidden in here, in the bananas, and then she’ll pop out. It makes her entrance more dramatic. It was Mr. Zanuck’s idea. Don’t worry about actually pulling the cart, the animals will do all the work,” the PA said cheerfully.

  One of the oxen raised its tail. A pile of pungent brown nuggets fell onto the set’s green carpet.

  “I’m not doing this,” Kitchen said in Portuguese.

  Graça sighed. “It’s just an animal, you don’t have to be scared . . .”

  “I’m not scared,” Kitchen replied, his voice raised. “I’m a musician. I don’t pull carts.”

  “We’ll never be able to show our faces back home again,” Tiny interrupted.

  “We can’t show them now,” Graça said. “What’s the difference?”

  “It’s not so bad,” Little Noel said. “It’s supposed to be a silly nightclub act. We saw worse acts than this a dozen times at clubs back home.”

  Graça nodded. “It’s supposed to be over-the-top. Everybody watching will get it.”

  Vinicius looked at me. “Will they?”

  “How’s she supposed to know?” Graça said, crossing her arms over her sparkling chest. “Dor’s not the goddamn director.”

  Tiny shook his head. “We’re great musicians and they’re making us look like oafs. You’d never see an American swing band doing this shit. They’d wear tuxedos and look respectable.”

  “We can’t bail out now,” I said. “Especially if it’s Zanuck’s idea.”

  “So Zanuck can make us look like chumps?” Kitchen asked.

  “He sure can’t,” said Banana. “Because I’m not doing it.”

  “Me neither,” Tiny agreed.

  Graça’s face paled. “You think I like this?” she asked, pointing at the giant berries swinging from her dress. “We’re putting on a show here, it’s all pretend. It might look silly now, but when it’s filmed and we’re on a movie screen, it’ll be different.”

  “Everything’s ‘we’ with you,” Kitchen said. “Until ‘we’ can’t set foot in the Mocambo Club with you because they don’t let our kind inside. Until ‘we’ can’t walk on the red carpet when our own movies premiere because the studio doesn’t like our looks. Then you’re not part of ‘we’ anymore, are you? Then you’re Sofia Salvador, and we’re just some band. Well, I’m not pulling a damn cart, even if it is pretend.”

  “So you’re leaving me high and dry?” Graça said.

  “We’re not leaving anybody,” Tiny said. “We’re just not pulling that cart.”

  “It’s one minute of one scene,” Graça said. “If you can’t do this for me, then don’t bother backing me up on anything else.”

  “Nobody’s going anywhere,” Vinicius said. “Let’s all calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” Kitchen said. “You’re not the leader of this band anymore.”

  “Since when?” Vinicius asked.

  “Since you and Dor made your own band,” Kitchen replied.

  Vinicius glanced at me, wide-eyed.

  “She didn’t tell anybody,” Graça said. “We’re not dumb. We all know you two have been recording behind our backs.”

  “It’s not behind your backs,” I sputtered. “It’s a different sound.”

  “One we can’t handle,” Tiny said.

  “No,” Vinicius said, running his hands through his hair. “It just sounds better with two people. It’s nothing serious. It’s just for fun.”

  “For fun?” I asked him.

  Graça laughed. “See, Dor? It’s just a little fun on the side. It doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

  “We shouldn’t even be talking about this,” I said. “You’ve got a number to film, and you’d better convince the boys to film it with you. I’m not pulling the strings backstage for you anymore.”

  “Fine,” she said, still staring at me. “I’ll film it on my own. I’ll pull that fucking cart with my bare hands if I have to. I don’t need you.”

  Kitchen laughed. “So that’s how it goes? Who’s going to play for you? Some gringos?”

  Graça moved her face so close to his, their noses nearly touched. “People buy tickets to see me, not you.”

  “So pull the cart, gringa,” Kitchen replied.


  Graça stumbled backward. Little Noel caught her in his arms. “Why don’t you cool it, Kitchen!” he yelled.

  “Are you bossing me?” Kitchen replied, his voice low.

  Tiny stepped between them. “Let’s take five. I think we all—”

  “English only!” a shrill voice called out.

  The blonde starlet’s personal production assistant walked imperiously toward us. “You’re holding up the shoot,” he said. “The director will be back in five minutes and you haven’t even taken your places.”

  “This is a private conversation,” I said.

  “Then maybe you should have it in private and not in the middle of the set,” he replied. “If you’re going to talk out here, it has to be in English. Can’t you read the signs? Or do you people need everything written in Spanish?”

  It would’ve been sensible to ignore him and Saint Blondie, and to focus my efforts on getting Graça and the boys in front of the camera. Years before, that’s what I would have done. But we’d been slogging through films in Hollywood for a while by then, and all of our patience was worn thin. So I ignored that filthy little PA and turned to Kitchen.

  “Give me fifty dollars,” I ordered.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Jesus, just give me the money!”

  He reached into his pocket, removed a money clip, and handed me a fifty. I ignored the PA, pushing past him and others until I reached the blonde starlet. The woman sat in full makeup and costume, sipping cola from a straw and watching us. Beside her, one of her assistants held the cardboard swear box under his arm. I pointed at it, and then stuffed the fifty-dollar bill inside.

  “There,” I said, addressing Saint Blondie in nearly perfect English. “Now we can tell you to go fuck yourself as many times as we please.”

  * * *

  —

  The swear box story appeared in a Hollywood gossip column without me in it. It was a catfight between Sofia Salvador and Saint Blondie—the hot-tempered Brazilian bombshell jealous of her costar. I was erased from the story as easily as Blue Moon was erased from their scene. And because that version of the story was printed in newspapers, that was how people remembered it ever afterward. No one recalled the “English Only” signs on set. And even though the entire cast and crew had watched me fill Saint Blondie’s ridiculous swear box, years later, when biographers of Sofia Salvador and Saint Blondie printed interviews in their books, crew members only confirmed the gossip column’s account. I wasn’t surprised; it made for a better story and, in the end, that’s what everyone wants.

  In reality, Saint Blondie accused me of threatening and grabbing her. (I don’t recall this; the moments after I stuffed money into the swear box are a blur of raised voices, shrieks, and footsteps pounding across the set.) Whatever happened, Blondie put on an elaborate victim act for the director, saying she feared for her safety. I was ordered to leave Fox and not come back. I was lucky, the director said, that he didn’t have me arrested by studio police. He was doing Sofia Salvador a great favor by letting me go.

  Before being escorted out, I was allowed to go to our trailer to collect my things; I had nothing important there, but wanted to see Graça. A part of me hoped she would leave with me, without filming the “Fruity Cutie” scene, and bring the entire production to a grinding halt.

  Graça stared at herself in the trailer’s mirror. She unclipped her massive strawberry earrings and dropped them onto the vanity with a thud. Her eyes flicked toward me.

  “There’s the hero,” she said.

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “You’re giving the boys exactly what they want: an excuse to walk out on me, to not finish what we all started.”

  “The boys are allowed to stay if they want.”

  “But they won’t,” Graça said. “If you go, they go.”

  “There was a time when you would’ve congratulated me for what I did back there. I stood up for you.”

  “Whatever that was, it wasn’t for me,” she said.

  I placed a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to go back out there,” I said. “You don’t have to do that scene.”

  Graça shook me off her.

  “We’re not kids in Lapa anymore. We can’t smash people’s faces in, or make the ones we don’t like disappear.”

  Her eyes met mine in the mirror’s reflection. I held tightly to the back of her chair.

  “If I don’t go out there and perform, Saint Blondie and the crew will say we’re a bunch of unprofessional animals,” Graça said. “That’s what they want, you know. They want us to give up. They want to tell everyone that we can’t hack it. Well, I’m not giving them that gift. I’m nailing that scene even if it kills me.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. It’s a song and dance.”

  “Well, I’m tired of it,” Graça said.

  “Well, it’s what you wanted.”

  “Is it?” she asked, then shifted her eyes to stare at her own reflection. “I’m getting fat again. When this picture wraps they’re sending me to some clinic in the desert where they starve you and shoot water up your ass to clean out your insides. I’ll either come back skinny or dead. But at least when you’re dead, you can’t disappoint everybody.”

  An incessant, tinny ringing filled my ears. “You don’t disappoint me.”

  Graça shook her head. “I don’t work hard enough. I don’t practice enough. I’m ruining my voice with all these cigarettes. I eat too much. I sleep too late. I spend too much.”

  “I say those things to help you be better.”

  “I don’t want to be better!” Graça snapped. “I want to be who I am.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “I don’t even know anymore, thanks to you.”

  “Do me a favor—don’t put on this suffering artist act,” I said. “You’ve never suffered a day in your life.”

  “I suffer every day, knowing what I know.”

  Graça’s chest was splotched red, as if she’d touched a stinging plant.

  “And what do you know?” I asked.

  “The only reason you’re here is because of me,” Graça said. “I saved you. I always save you. But you never save me. You only save yourself.”

  * * *

  —

  They show Sofia Salvador’s “Fruity Cutie” musical scene in film classes, as an example of the era’s over-the-top productions. I’ve watched it myself, dozens of times. Even by today’s standards, the Technicolor is shockingly bright. The camera pans across what appears to be water (it is blue carpet) and onto a vast, exotic land (green carpet dotted with satin banana trees) covered with identical girls—all wearing bright blue turbans. As the music gets louder, the island girls dance. The oxcart appears. Walking beside the cart, looking nervously at the oxen, are five shirtless and muscled men the director had scrounged from another shoot.

  The only Blue Moon boys on set were Vinicius and Little Noel, who stayed to support Graça through her number but wouldn’t appear on film. They stood behind that camera, watching. In the movie, as soon as the dubbed music begins to play, Sofia Salvador pops up from within the oxcart. At that moment, everyone around her—the island girls, the oxen, the muscled oafs—no longer exists; only Sofia Salvador matters.

  “Oh, why does everybody always stop and stare,

  the minute I come in a room, or who-knows-where?

  I guess they think that I don’t really have a care,

  because I am the Fruity Cutie girl!

  “The blond boys always want to see my delicacies,

  they can’t believe a girl can carry all of these!

  But I don’t let them see my fruits, those sly young fleas,

  because I am the Fruity Cutie girl!”

  It is her first and last song performed entirely in English, and completely by herself. She gives the cam
era a wink and lowers herself from the cart. She plays a xylophone. She swings her arms. She smiles. She slinks in and out of the rows of identical island girls. Two shirtless men lift Sofia Salvador high into the air. (The director was nearly censored for this; some Christian groups thought it vulgar, but the Hays Commission let him keep it in the film.)

  “Brazilian senhoritas are so shy and sweet,

  they do not show their fruits to every boy they meet.

  But when we do, it is the very best of treats.

  Because we are the Fruity Cutie girls!”

  Sofia Salvador sways and smiles. The camera pans wide. There are walls of mirrors around her, making it look like the original Sofia had multiplied into hundreds, then thousands—a kaleidoscope of color and glittering smiles, moving into infinity. It is an obvious trick, and its obviousness is what makes it genius.

  Rumor was that the entire crew clapped after the “Fruity Cutie” performance, except for the blonde starlet, of course. After I left, Graça performed the complicated scene in one perfect take.

  * * *

  —

  Bedford Drive was empty. Graça and Vinicius and Noel were still at Fox. The other boys had gone their separate ways—some to the Showboat, some out with girls, some on a drive. Where would I go after my expulsion? Where did I belong?