The Garden on Sunset

by Martin Turnbull

  “If we live long enough to have grandchildren,” the pale girl said.

  Alice surveyed the crowd gathering on the corners of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. “Look at all these people!” she said. “They’ve come to see us!”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” said one of the other girls. “These people have come to see one of us fall off. And they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Yeah well, phooey on that, is what I say.”

  That girl’s right, Gwendolyn decided. None of these people were here to see the lighting of the largest billboard ever constructed in Los Angeles. Publicity was publicity, but a human billboard had to be the craziest scheme any studio had ever dreamed up.

  MGM had poured a small fortune into their new picture, The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Almost every major star on their roster — John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton, Billy Haines — had been thrown into a string of all-singing, all-dancing, all-talking, all-star songs and acts. As if that wasn’t enough, some bright spark in publicity had decided that Hollywood’s Biggest Picture needed Hollywood’s Biggest Billboard. And then some other wisenheimer had dreamed up an even wilder idea — to put real people on it. Of course, by ‘real people’ they meant ‘pretty chorines.’

  Two huge words had been painted onto the billboard: HOLLYWOOD and REVUE, twelve feet high, and ringed with red electric bulbs. Below each word a platform jutted out; neither of them looked terribly wide from down on the street. When they’d climbed the ladder and tottered out on their allotted position, they seemed even narrower.

  The pale girl sighed. “How’s about them mattresses they promised, huh?” The choreographer, a dark-haired, serious fellow named Busby, had guaranteed them that the sidewalk would be covered with thick, bouncy mattresses, but neither the mattresses nor Busby had appeared.

  “Who cares?” Alice said. “I just heard one of the assistants tell the Metronome Newsreel guy that he wants a photograph of every girl because the head of casting at MGM is here tonight.

  A flashbulb popped inside Gwendolyn’s head. At the Brown Derby that night, she’d asked Ritchie who the dapper gent with the “I’m very important around here” air was. Ritchie had smirked, “He’s the busiest casting couch in the West. That’s Mr. Metro-Goldwyn-Snare.” Gwendolyn peered down from her perch three stories up, trying to pick him out of the crowd. Oh Lordy, she thought, the head of casting for MGM could be watching me right this very minute.

  The view from the top almost made the climb worthwhile. Gwendolyn could see over the red roof of the sprawling Hollywood Hotel on the opposite corner. The onlookers were the size of poppies, but their wolf-whistles and cat calls reached the chorus girls all the way up above the twelve-foot-tall letters of HOLLYWOOD. Gwendolyn clung to the rope banister over the Y and wondered if Mr. MGM was more likely to be watching the girls on the ends.

  The pale girl stood to Gwendolyn’s left and let out a soft groan. “That dance routine has completely flown out of my head.”

  “It’s easy!” Alice called from Gwendolyn’s right. “Right kick, left kick, right kick, left kick, clap above your head then thrice in front —” She danced on the two-foot deep platform just the same as she had on the pine floor at the Vine Street Dance Academy. Gwendolyn admired the nerve of her look-alike. Alice might be a little on the cheap side, and perhaps a mite pushier than need be, but here, with the winds of the Pacific blowing in her face, she was an inspiration.

  “GIRLS!” The MGM supervisor’s voice boomed up at them through his megaphone. “Your attention, please. The lights go on in two minutes. The music will start two minutes after that. Count to thirty-two and start dancing. Every newspaper and newsreel in Los Angeles is here. You are making history!

  “In other words, don’t screw it up,” Alice said wryly. The girls laughed, relieved to break the tension. “Look out! We’re on!”

  One of the assistants pumped his fist into the air. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  Four enormous klieg lights burst into life, flooding the billboard with blinding light. The crowd, the traffic, the streetcars, even the Hollywood Hotel disappeared. All Gwendolyn could see were her feet at the edge of the platform. Beyond that? Nothing.

  Hundreds of globes flickered to life around the words HOLLYWOOD REVUE. A candy cane red glow enveloped them. The jaunty opening strains of the picture’s big finale number–“Singin’ in the Rain”–started up, but Gwendolyn missed the count and started to panic. “Is anybody counting?” she called out.

  “Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four . . .” Alice counted out loud to thirty-two. “And GO! Right kick, left kick, right kick, left kick, clap above your head then thrice in front . . .”

  Had Busby included a spin or a turn, the masses below would have been treated to a cascade of showgirls before the end of the first sixteen bars, but his choreography was largely looping arms and feathered caps. Gwendolyn’s shoulders started to relax after a couple of verses. Twenty-six chorus girls kicked and waved and hoped and dreamed in perfect sync, praying that this would be their big break.

  The song ended in a flourish of white caps and red, white and blue feathers. Gwendolyn’s eyes followed a stray feather toward the ground and her heart lurched. She grabbed at the rope banister and missed the count on the next song.

  “Alice!” she called toward the curtain of light. “Are you counting?”

  “Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, am-I-the-only-one-who-can-count-here? Fifteen, sixteen . . .”

  By the time Alice reached the count of thirty-two, Gwendolyn was frozen to the platform.

  “Come on, Brick, what are you waiting for? And left kick, clap above your head then thrice in front.”

  Gwendolyn knew that if she just stood there like a dead clam, the casting guy really would notice her, and not in the way she hoped. With her heart pounding in her ears, she forced herself to start moving but struggled to keep up with the routine. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that even Alice was out of step now, and drifting closer to Gwendolyn.

  Right on the last line–“In the ra-a-a-a-a-in!”–Gwendolyn let go of the rope to grab her hat for the final flourish. At the last second, she saw the feathers on Alice’s cap arcing around and heading straight for her. Their wrists connected and Alice cried out, “OH!” She let go of her cap and Gwendolyn ducked, but it hit her squarely on the ear. She lost her balance, her right knee gave way, and she stumbled to the wooden platform as her own cap flew into the sea of light. Her right hand burned as it slid along the rope, and she let go. Her fingernails scraped the edge of the platform and she felt a rush of cool air. She looked down at the space between her and the ground and wondered if the cameras were getting all of this.

  CHAPTER 17

  Kathryn came out of the bathroom drying her hair with a towel.

  “What did you say, dear?”

  “It’s just so quiet!” Gwendolyn said from the sofa. Her ankle, still so swollen and bruised, was bandaged and propped up on a pillow. She let the Examiner fall into her lap. “I’d gotten used to all the noise around here. All the parties, the drinking, the laughing, the music. Even all those guys banging away at their typewriters. But now it’s like God’s reached across the Garden and turned off the radio.”

  Kathryn pointed to the front page. “Well, if that won’t hush things up, I don’t know what will.”

  STOCK MARKET CRASHES FURTHER

  DAILY LOSSES EXCEED 10% PER DAY

  Bankers Seen Leaping from Manhattan Skyscrapers

  The raucous almost-nightly parties around the Garden had evaporated within a week. Everyone had retreated into their villas to hibernate until the acorns grew back. But, Kathryn wondered, how long would this financial winter last?

  Gwendolyn adjusted her ankle on the pillows. “I think this is one of the times where you can say it’s not so bad being poor. Having no money in the first place means not losing any when everything comes busting apart.”

  There was
a loud knock on the door. “Miss Massey. It’s Jake. You got a telephone call in the lobby. Your mother — sounds plenty upset.”

  The girls raised their eyebrows at each other and Kathryn slipped on her shoes.

  When Kathryn returned, Gwendolyn was balancing on one foot at the kitchen sink, attempting to fill the kettle. “Is your mama okay?”

  Kathryn took the kettle and shooed her friend back to the sofa. “Really, Gwennie, you’re lucky you came away from that awful fall with just a badly sprained ankle. You were incredibly lucky you landed on the roof of that convertible.”

  “I was lucky that convertible had its roof up.”

  “Exactly. So don’t go making it worse by ignoring the doctor’s orders.”

  “But what about your mama?”

  “My mother has more melodrama than Norma Talmadge. She was all teary and barking on about some sort of calamity.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re about to find out. She’s on her way over.” Kathryn struck a long match and lit the burner. “Don’t get sucked in by her act.”

  “How do you know it’s an act?”

  Kathryn looked into Gwendolyn’s big, trusting green eyes. “It’s always an act.”

  “You’ll want me to go, then, and give you some privacy,” Gwendolyn said, hobbling to her feet again.

  “You sit your pert little behind back down on that sofa, missy. I want you right here so you can witness firsthand what I have to put up with.”

  Francine must have splurged on a taxicab because she was knocking on the front door before the water boiled. Kathryn opened the door to find her mother in a shapeless dress of the drabbest mud-brown imaginable. She hadn’t worn it since their most threadbare time, when they lived on day-old bread and that vile, watery onion and black bean soup. The fact that Francine had dragged out this dress gave Kathryn reason to pause.

  “Kathryn, darling, you have no idea the calamity — oh! Gwendolyn. You’re here.”

  “She does live here, Mother.”

  “Whatever have you done to your ankle?”

  “Took a bad fall,” Gwendolyn said.

  Francine nodded as though in sympathy but Kathryn could tell that her mother was more than happy to have an audience. Kathryn pointed her mother to a loveseat and sat down in the armchair. “So, what’s going on that you had to rush all the way over here?”

  Francine intertwined her fingers and squeezed her hands together so tightly her fingernails turned white. She sucked in a full lung’s worth of air, held it for a good five seconds, and then cried out, “I’m destitute!”

  Ah, Kathryn thought, so the resurfaced frumpy brown dress is a costume in which to play the Penniless Mother. Kathryn shot Gwendolyn a withering look, and then turned back to her mother. “What do you mean, you’re destitute?”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the news? The stock market! It’s collapsed! Everybody is in ruins!”

  “Mother, the only people who are in ruins are the investors who had money in the stock market.”

  “But that’s the whole problem. I had all my money tied up in it.”

  “Oh, Mother, really. All your money tied up in the stock market? What did you have, four dollars of Woolworth stock?

  Francine was working herself up into hysterics. “I have a friend whose brother owns a pawn shop. He gave me a very good price for my wedding ring.” Kathryn glanced at her mother’s empty left hand and was surprised to see it bare. What’s the bet, she thought, it’s stashed in her handbag? “I needed money and my friend is very good with it. So he took what I got for my ring and invested it in the stock market.” Francine shot her daughter a sharp look. “I had to do something once you’d deserted me. It wasn’t much to begin with, but this fellow was a wizard with money. My tiny nest egg grew and grew and grew. It was astonishing.”

  Kathryn watched her mother take a handkerchief stashed up her sleeve and dab her eyes. “And now?”

  “And now it’s all gone. All of it! Every spare dollar I had. I am utterly broke.”

  “Exactly how much money are we talking here?” Kathryn asked.

  “What does that matter?” Francine snapped. “The point is that it’s all gone, and I cannot afford the rent. You’re just going to have to move back home with me.”

  “I’m what?” Kathryn realized they’d commenced the third act of today’s performance.

  “If you don’t come home, I’ll be thrown out. I’ll be on the streets. Homeless!” She turned to Gwendolyn with tears in her eyes, careful not to let them tip over the bottom lids and spill down her cheeks. It was more dramatic that way, and Francine ought to know: it was Francine who taught her that just before an audition for DeMille. “Gwendolyn, my dear, what sort of daughter would allow her mother to be tossed into the gutter like yesterday’s garbage?”

  Gwendolyn’s eyes were wide as she tried to think of an answer.

  “Mother!” Kathryn said. “Look at me.” Francine drew her imploring gaze slowly back to her daughter. “My entire life, you’ve never had more than twenty dollars in the bank. And now you expect me to believe that the stock market crash has reduced you to penury? Oh, Mother.”

  Francine opened her handbag. “I know someone in the costume department of Warner Brothers,” she said. “Her son works at the Ambassador Hotel.”

  “So?”

  “So her son mentioned last week that the hotel’s nightclub needs a new cigarette girl. You know, the Cocoanut Grove? They have the palm trees they used in that Valentino movie, The Sheik.”

  “Everybody’s heard of the Cocoanut Grove, mother. What about it?”

  “Their last cigarette girl was discovered by a talent scout from Universal.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her handbag and waved it at Kathryn. “You should call him right away.”

  “What for?”

  Francine pulled a face as though Kathryn had just dumped sour cream in her coffee. “This silly fan mail job you’re doing for Tallulah Bankhead isn’t going to get you anywhere. But a job at the Cocoanut Grove?”

  Kathryn thought of the article she wrote about the landing of the Graf Zeppelin. It was pretty damn good, even if she did say so herself. She hadn’t heard back from Wilkerson yet, but that could only be a matter of time. She jutted her head forward. “Is that the best you think I can do? A cigarette girl in a night club?”

  “You’ll be right in front of every bigwig in the business. Kathryn, darling, think of what it might lead to! Sooner or later, someone is bound to notice you. Look where it got the last girl. Universal Studios!”

  “MOTHER!” Kathryn exploded. “How many times do I need to say this? I. Do. Not. Want. To. Be. An. Actress. I’m doing fine here. Just fine. If you need help covering your rent, I can lend you next month’s. But I will not be moving back in with you.”

  Francine sniffed. “They say that this stock market thing is going to lead to the most awful recession imaginable.” She lay the address on the coffee table. “I think a steady paycheck will be hard to come by.”

  “You’re probably right,” Kathryn agreed. She strode to the front door and yanked it open. “So you’ll need to start looking for a job before all the good ones are taken, won’t you? I hear there’s something going at the Cocoanut Grove.”

  Francine rose to her feet as though she were Queen Victoria. “I cannot believe my own daughter is throwing me out into the street.”

  “I’m not throwing you anywhere, Mother.”

  Francine stopped at the door and turned to Gwendolyn. “I know you wouldn’t treat your mother like this,” she said, all grande dame. “You’re too much of a lady. I hope your ankle heals quickly, dear.” She turned and marched out.

  Kathryn slammed the door shut with a whump. “Am I the world’s worst daughter?” she moaned.

  “That depends on whether or not your mother was telling you the truth.”

  “I can guarantee you she was doing nothing of the sort.”

&nbs
p; “In that case, you’ve done a very brave thing. You’ve just declared yourself an independent woman of the world who had to make it clear to her mother that things have changed.”

  Kathryn stepped outside and watched her mother trot along the path and disappear into the shadows of the Garden of Allah Hotel. Or, she thought, one who pushed her mother out to starve to death in the street.

  CHAPTER 18

  Gwendolyn stood outside the double doors of the Cocoanut Grove and hoisted up her cleavage, wishing she had worn her own clothes. The silky midnight blue cocktail dress fit perfectly around the waist, but her neighbor’s bust was much fuller than hers. Their neighbor, Bessie Love, had assured Gwendolyn that if she wore her lucky dress, she wouldn’t have to worry about a thing, but right that minute, Gwendolyn had serious doubts about both Bessie’s luck and her bosom. She gave it another push and opened the etched glass doors.

  Inside, the nightclub was lit strictly for daytime business. A half dozen bare bulbs burned as the cleaners scrubbed away the sins committed in the bootlegged blur of last night’s Charleston contest. In the stark light, the dark floral carpet and the velvet drapes seemed worn out, and the papier-mâché trees looked cheap and flimsy.

  “Hello?” Gwendolyn called out.

  “You must be Kathryn Massey.”

  A doughy man with the face of a midway bouncer appeared by a palm tree.

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t go by that name anymore.”

  The man sucked on the fat cigar that hung from the side of his mouth like a gangplank. “Of course you don’t.” He beckoned her to follow him into his office.

  After two years of shoestring budgeting, Gwendolyn was down to three hundred Eugene Hammerschmidt dollars. With all this talk of a deep recession filling the pages of every newspaper these days, Gwendolyn had come to the hard conclusion that she was going to have to get a job until Hollywood’s fickle gods found her. Francine’s cigarette girl tip was just the ticket. She tried to walk as though her sprained ankle no longer hurt like the dickens, although she needn’t have bothered. The guy didn’t seem to be paying her much attention.