China Dolls

by Lisa See

  Sunny-Side Up

  We’d been in Miami for eight months. I dumped the rubber king after he proposed. (No one would tie me down.) So we were back in our beach hotel—happy with our suite of rooms and attentive doormen. Grace and I were playing the Beachcomber. We had a group of harmless stage-door Johnnies, and we basked in the glow of our mutual success. Grace’s body—skinny legs and big tits—had finally caught up to the time and place. Every magazine and newspaper wanted to photograph her, even more than they did me. I didn’t let it bother me too much. Tommy had recently turned four and would be going to kindergarten the following year. Helen started to plan. “Soon Eddie and I will be a broken mirror rejoined—a husband and wife together again. I don’t want to return to San Francisco, and none of us wants to be on the road again. I’m going to look for a house.” It sounded good to Grace and me, and we asked her to look for something for us too.

  Club business was bigger than ever as men returned stateside. We survived. Bring on the drinks! Bring on the girls! I took up with a Cuban sugar king, and he introduced Grace to a pineapple prince—also Cuban—named Mario, who was sweet enough. (He and Grace sure could mambo.) The sugar king proposed to me, so I immediately gave him the boot. “I’m not the marrying kind,” I said, and I meant it. A week later, Mario proposed to Grace. “Nothing wrong in marrying for money,” Helen advised. “You’ll be set for life.” Helen had once said something similar to Grace about marrying Monroe. Grace was never going to marry this guy either. Mario wasn’t a bad sort; she just didn’t love him.

  On Christmas Eve, Helen packed away her photo of Lai Kai, and then off we went to the airport. When she spotted Eddie, she swooped up Tommy and pointed. “There’s your daddy!” Eddie looked as cool as ever. He’d been mustered out of the Army with a standard suit, a pair of shoes, an overcoat, and an old-fashioned trilby. He moved just like he always had—with inimitable grace—but somehow he seemed a little lost. He hugged us one by one. He shook Tommy’s hand, careful not to scare him. We climbed into the rubber king’s convertible—I wasn’t about to return it!—and drove to our hotel. In the rearview mirror, I saw Eddie’s eyes shifting from side to side. A horn blared next to us, and he jumped so high he nearly flew out of the car.

  A small tree with white flocking and red balls sat on the table in our shared living area. Helen was obviously thrilled Eddie was home, and he acted happy to be with all of us, but the poor guy just wasn’t the same. He tried mightily to put up a good front, though. When Tommy worried that Santa wouldn’t find him because we didn’t have snow or a chimney like he saw in his picture books, Eddie hammered five nails into the windowsill, hung our stockings, put some cookies on a saucer, and promised, “Santa will come right through this window.” That night, Tommy slept with Grace and me so the married couple could have some time alone—to talk. The next morning, Helen opened our door and called, “Merry Christmas!”

  Eddie gave us French perfume, Hermès silk scarves, and the softest kid gloves you can imagine. Grace, Helen, and I had shopped together, so we didn’t have a lot of surprises: straw purses embellished with appliquéd tropical fruits and flowers, earrings, bangles, and—now that shortages and rationing were over—brightly colored skirts with fluffy petticoats. Grace and I gave Eddie bathing trunks, shorts, a Panama hat, and sandals—to welcome him to Miami. Helen’s present: a stylish tuxedo. “So you can dance again,” she said. Eddie stared at it for the longest time before trying it on.

  Tommy had to be about the luckiest little cuss that year. His mom and his aunties gave him clothes, coloring books, and toy trucks. In France, Eddie had bought a set of antique tin soldiers for his son to play with backstage. Tommy, overcoming his initial shyness, climbed on Eddie’s lap and pronounced this “the best Christmas ever.” Maybe for him, but I thought his dad might burst into tears.

  AT THE CLUB, while Helen was backstage with Tommy, Eddie danced the bolero, tango, and rumba with customers to try to get back in the swing of things. Soon he and Helen (and the kid too, of course) started staying after the last show so they could practice their old routines and come up with some new ones. (They didn’t have a traditional marriage, but they did love each other, and they’d always been fabulous dance partners.) Eddie was sober and physically strong, but Grace and I could hear him prowling around the suite’s living room all night. In the morning, Helen, Eddie, and Tommy would emerge from their room looking exhausted. Helen said Eddie often woke up shivering and drenched in sweat. He was nervous and jittery, cringing any time he heard a loud noise and during the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. By now my friends and I had all suffered. Time, love, and companionship had helped each of us. I hoped the same would happen for Eddie, and his anxious state would pass.

  In February 1946, Grace and I headlined the Miami branch of the Latin Quarter. A week into our run, the manager came backstage after the second show and told us two men at table ten—the best in the house—wanted to see us. Grace and I dressed in gowns, fluffed our hair, reapplied lipstick, and then went out to see just who they were. My body was as slippery as an eel under my sequined gown as I slithered through the tables. My skin was translucent. A sparkling rhinestone clip held my gardenias in place.

  “It’s Lee Mortimer!” I squealed in surprise and delight, grabbing Grace’s arm. “He’s the one who sponsored me to get out of Topaz!”

  Lee looked just the same: tall forehead, bright white teeth, a cigarette held between his forefinger and middle finger with an air of casual sophistication. Next to him sat a big Irish ape of a guy with a half-chewed cigar clamped in his mouth. His name was Tom Ball.

  “I wanted Tom to see you, Ruby,” Lee said. Once a sponsor, always a sponsor? “And of course everyone’s heard of the Oriental Danseuse—”

  “Show business,” I interrupted before he could get too carried away with Grace. “One minute you’re up …” I slowly lifted one of my legs up, up, up until my sequined skirt slipped into my crotch and my leg extended above my head. (“All the way to high heaven” is what Lee would later write about that move.) “The next minute you’re down,” I purred as I brought my gold-satin high heel back to the floor. “I ought to know, darling. My career has truly been a roller-coaster ride.”

  Yes, even after all we’d been through, I still wanted to outshine Grace.

  Lee gulped. “You gals have been in Miami long enough,” he managed to get out. “You’re ready for New York, and New York is ready for you. Tom here is opening a club called the China Doll. We’re down here to lure you up there.”

  I sat up in my chair. Return to New York? Finally!

  “We want to build the whole show around the two of you,” Tom added in a voice that grated like a cement mixer. “We’re calling it Slant-Eyed Scandals. It’s going to be the biggest, costliest, most elaborate Oriental floor show seen anywhere, and it will stand up to any all-white show on Broadway. We open in eight weeks.”

  Grace signaled to a waiter, whispered in his ear, and then slid her chair closer to Tom. “Who else do you have?”

  “We’ve got Keye Luke, Charlie Chan’s Number One Son, to emcee.”

  Grace and I arched our eyebrows. Charlie Chan’s Number One Son? So trite. So stereotypical.

  “He’s a terrific singer, for your information,” Tom said. “I’m getting the best of the best.” He was also negotiating with the Lim Sisters, the Merry Mahjongs, Bernice Chow, George Louie, and Ming and Ling.

  “We’ve played with all those folks,” Grace said with a shrug. “You make it sound like just another Oriental follies.”

  She could be quite the smart aleck, and she peppered him with questions, but I could see she wanted this as much as I did. Her delay tactics were explained when she announced, “Ah, here’s Helen, our road manager. Let’s see what she has to say.”

  Helen assessed the situation and explained that she would handle logistical details that couldn’t be left to Sam Bernstein. Her first question was where would Grace and I reside.

  “Wait a min
ute! You’re coming too,” I blurted.

  “I can’t go,” Helen said. “Eddie and I are putting our act back together.”

  I turned to the men. “You can’t have an Oriental theme without the Chinese Dancing Sweethearts.”

  “Haven’t heard of them,” Tom growled.

  “Then call Charlie Low at the Forbidden City,” Grace said.

  But Tom, bullheaded, took a hard line. “We’ve already got a father-son comedy duo,” he said. “I don’t want another family team. It’s a nightclub. People go to nightclubs for fantasy, not to see husbands and wives.”

  “They don’t dance like a husband and wife,” I assured them.

  “He’s been off the stage for too long,” Lee objected.

  “He was in the war!” Grace exclaimed. “Where’s your patriotism?”

  “Lee, Tom, sweet ones, let me give this to you straight,” I declared. “Grace and I won’t go to New York unless you hire Helen and Eddie too.”

  The two men exchanged glances. Could we really be such prima donnas? YES!

  “All right,” Tom sighed. “We’ll check them out with Charlie. If everything’s on the up-and-up, then we’ll call Sam to work out the financial details.”

  Sam negotiated $1,000 a week each for Princess Tai and the Oriental Danseuse. The Chinese Dancing Sweethearts would earn $750 a week. We’d be rolling in dough. Oh, and no George Louie. Grace still held a blood grudge against him and didn’t want him around. That was fine by me. I’d purposely locked away from my mind what had happened to me—the internment camp and who might have turned me in—and I’d continue to do it. No questions, no bitter accusations, no arguments; a thousand bucks a week, New York, stardom. Brighter stars ahead.

  WE ARRIVED IN New York City on February 11, seven weeks before the China Doll’s grand opening. We settled into a three-bedroom suite with a small living room at the Hotel Victoria at Fifty-First and Seventh. Lee Mortimer swept Grace and me on a champagne-bubble tour of the Stork Club, Copacabana, Leon and Eddie’s, and the Rainbow Room. We met Clark Gable, Noël Coward, Hedy Lamarr, Lena Horne, Betty Grable, and Gene Kelly. We listened to bands play “Brazil,” “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” “That Old Black Magic,” and “Avalon.” We saw Milton Berle (who we heard made ten thousand dollars a night), Danny Thomas (the nicest guy), and Jimmy Durante (a hoot and a half). We danced purely for fun and showed those big-city folks what was what.

  And, man, were we dressed. We shopped like maniacs, throwing out our tropical prints and exchanging them for sophisticated city dresses. When Lee asked us, “How much do you need to buy new shoes?” and we answered, “Three dollars,” he laughed. “You can’t buy a pair of shoes in New York for three dollars.” He opened his wallet and gave us each fifty bucks. We bought black satin ankle-strap sandals and black suede platform pumps. He gave us even more money to buy frocks with hemlines that covered our calves.

  “You’ve got the look, baby,” Lee told Grace. “You’re a perfect piece of cheesecake in the city that invented cheesecake.” He encouraged Grace to drop her neckline to showcase the cleavage that had once embarrassed her. He gave us the skinny on what to do with our handbags. “Dames who carry their purses while dancing demonstrate that they’re more at home in a dance hall than a nightclub.” He taught us the ropes: don’t go to a dressy place wearing day clothes; don’t go to a dump in evening togs; don’t complain about the bill, because you were a sucker to go there in the first place. He showed us how to spot and then steer clear of out-of-towners.

  When he took us to Sardi’s, he suggested we speak loudly, so other patrons could eavesdrop on us. Dorothy Kilgallen, the gossip columnist, wrote: “What two lovely denizens of the night are building reputations for their biting repartee and devastating treatment of 52nd Street wolves? Lee Mortimer calls the enchanting Princess Tai his ‘little minx.’ ” Then, on to Grace: “Never one to pick a single bloom when she can have a bouquet, the Oriental Danseuse is known to attend many First Nights on the arms of different lucky gents. Those swells better watch out for her nails, though. Meow!” As a result of that squib, Grace’s nails became so famous that Sam got her a contract with a cosmetics company as the first Chinese nail model in the country. I said I was happy for her, but it was a bitter pill to gag down.

  Of course, I cut my usual wide swath. I spent time with Xaviar Cugat, who was between wives, before moving on to Louis Prima, who was married. Under the headline ROMANCE, Walter Winchell scribed: “What unfortunate bandleaders have had their hearts broken by a girl who should change her name to Jezebel?” When I read that, I laughed and laughed.

  Where were Helen, Eddie, and Tommy while we were tearing up the town? Either in our hotel, where Eddie could avoid the grinding gears and honking horns of prewar taxis, or at the studio space they’d rented to work on their act. Grace and I stopped in one evening to see the new routine Eddie had choreographed to “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.” It was typical Eddie—beautiful, intricate, and graceful. He still suffered from sweats and nightmares, but I was convinced he’d knock the socks off those New Yorkers once they saw him onstage.

  IN MID-MARCH, AND completely out of the blue, I received a phone call from my mother. I hadn’t spoken to her in ten years. She skipped the “I missed yous” and “how have you beens,” and got right to it. My parents had been released from Leupp and had decided to go back to Japan immediately. “You can’t do that,” I told her in Japanese when I saw Grace listening. “We haven’t even seen each other yet.”

  “We will have a long voyage together—”

  “I’m not going to Japan.”

  My mother balked at that. “Have you forgotten who you are?” she asked. “Have you forgotten that the Americans killed Hideo, and Yori is dead because he fought for them?”

  “Yori was in the most highly decorated regiment in the history of the armed forces,” I told her. “He earned the Medal of Honor. You should be proud of him.”

  She said, “Your father and I and the others in the camp celebrated the emperor’s birthday. We ate our eggs sunny-side up, because they looked like the flag of Japan. When we were told the war was over, your father asked why the Japanese flag wasn’t flying over the camp.”

  By the time I hung up, I was sobbing. Grace put her arms around me.

  “Do you want to go to San Francisco and see them off?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied with a sharp shake of my head. “I can’t get it out of my mind that they might actually have been spies.”

  “But you can’t be sure about that—”

  “They never got a trial, but I’m no closer to the truth about them.”

  “Other people were sent to camps, including you,” she pointed out, trying to comfort me, “and it was terrible. Maybe they’re going home because they’re fed up. Maybe they’re going home because they always wanted to go home. You told me that the first day we met.”

  “True, but I can’t honestly say if my parents are innocent, can I? I want to believe they are.” I dabbed my eyes with a handkerchief. “You and Helen are all the family I have left.”

  I went to bed and wept for hours. But the next morning … New York!

  What else could I do? I needed to survive.

  GRACE

  Woo Woo of the Week

  Two weeks before the China Doll opened, all the headliners met for blocking and dress rehearsals. The club was just a half block from our hotel. Where the Forbidden City played up an imperial China décor with plenty of red, gold, and clutter, the China Doll, a few steps below street level, was sleek, modern, and first-class all the way. The walls were pale blue with simple Chinese scenes painted in white. Dark blue lanterns hung from the ceilings.

  The ponies and showgirls shared one dressing room; as headliners, Ruby, Helen, and I each had our own dressing room. Settling in, I heard a familiar voice at my door: “Hi, Grace. What’s cooking?” It was Bessie, the eldest of the Lim Sisters. Ella and Dolores stood on either side of her, and one foot back, j
ust as they did when they performed. Soon, others arrived: the Merry Mahjongs with their whirling acrobatics, Bernice Chow with her big voice, Ming and Ling with their hillbilly act. It was great to see them all.

  We met the director, Donn Arden—gayer than a sweet potato and famous for mounting extravaganzas with snazzy costumes. Ruby was given a new bubble and fans made from ostrich feathers. The fabric for Helen’s gown was dyed in tea until the color matched her skin, then seamstresses covered the dress in rhinestones. My costumes were the most glamorous and expensive of my career, including one made from fifteen yards of monkey fur imported from Hong Kong. Real diamonds were sewn onto the tips of my shoes, so my feet would sparkle when I danced.

  The China Doll was to be a regular United Nations. Mr. Ball, an Irishman through and through, hired Jewish choreographers, composers, and writers to come up with good—fresh—material. We had two bands: one to play the show and a Latin band to pack the joint for dancing on weekends. A young guy named Lenny Bruce would do a comedy routine after the last show. Mr. Ball found Chinese cooks, a Jewish maître d’, and Puerto Rican waiters, dishwashers, cigarette girls, and hatcheck girls, who would all pretend to be Chinese. The ponies? It was just as hard as, if not harder than, it had been in San Francisco to find local Chinese girls willing to work in a club. More Chinese lived in the area, but that also meant the community was more conservative, so Mr. Arden and Mr. Ball poached a bunch of gals from Charlie and other club owners out west. Although Charlie had once labeled his glamour girls “Chinese” to protect them, all the entertainers at the China Doll were labeled “Chinese” so no one would be reminded about the dropping of the atomic bombs.

  On opening night, the place was packed with Broadway and Hollywood celebrities, critics and press agents, and Manhattanites and suburbanites. Our first show was clicking. Ming and Ling clowned and crooned. “Lee Mortimer’s China Dolls”—as the ponies came to be called—were sharp. Backstage, Eddie—slick as a cat’s whiskers in his evening dress—listened warily as Helen reassured him. He truly was one of the most handsome men ever to walk the earth, but I could see he was nervous.