Tinseltown Confidential: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 7)

by Martin Turnbull

Bogie called to say he had a print of his new movie. When reports had started to filter back to Hollywood about the rigors of filming in the Belgian Congo, everyone thought The African Queen was a turkey in the making. But when it went into post-production, the bees started buzzing that Bogie, Hepburn, and Huston had made a career-defining picture. Bogie’s invitation to the secret advance viewing came with a caveat: “Say nothing to nobody,” which Kathryn interpreted as, “I don’t exactly have permission to run this movie.”

  The movie was warm, funny, thrilling, and romantic. The gang of lucky viewers that emerged from the screening room on the United Artists lot were so high on what they’d just seen that when someone suggested dinner at Chasen’s, they piled into cars and tore down Beverly Boulevard.

  But now it was twenty-four hours later and Kathryn’s head was teetering on the edge of splitting open. A fistful of aspirin was the only thing keeping her upright.

  Kathryn rang the bell—not that it was likely to be heard over the blasts of laughter and clatter of ice hitting glass. She opened the door and plowed into a heated conversation about Palm Springs between Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and David Niven.

  When Judy spotted Kathryn, she cried out, “I give UP!” and left the two men. She pulled Kathryn into a hug. “They’re arguing about investing in real estate out in the desert. I keep reminding them that it’s just a pile of sand but they don’t want to hear it.”

  Kathryn hadn’t seen Judy since the party Gene Kelly threw a year ago to celebrate the success of Summer Stock. Judy had barely survived production and hadn’t looked at all well that night. But now her liquid brown eyes shone clear and bright with a vitality that a mountain of pills couldn’t extinguish.

  “I thought you were still laying them in the aisles at the Palace,” Kathryn said. “I tried to get tickets when I was in New York, but they couldn’t be had for love nor money.”

  For the past couple of months, Judy had enjoyed a triumphant comeback at the Palace Theatre, prompting Kathryn to devote an entire column entitled “Don’t Kick Her Yet—Judy’s Far From Down.”

  “You should have called me,” Judy scolded. “Yes, I’m still there. But I must confess, it’s exhausting. I asked Sid if perhaps we could take a few days off and get out of that cold. So here I am. This is my only party. Otherwise, I’ll be sleeping so soundly they’ll think I’m dead.”

  Now that Judy’s marriage to Vincente Minnelli was over, rumors of a romance between Judy and her manager, Sid Luft, were rife. “Is Sid here tonight?” Kathryn asked.

  “He stayed in New York. Once the Palace run ends, we’re looking at bringing the show to LA.”

  “You are?” Kathryn spun her head around too fast.

  “Oh my dear, you’re looking a little green around the gills. You weren’t at Chasen’s last night, were you?”

  Kathryn admitted that she was.

  “We need to get you some hair of the dog.”

  Judy led Kathryn to the curved bar in the corner of a packed living room. “And speaking of successes, congratulations on yours,” Judy exclaimed, pouring them each a generous Glenfiddich on the rocks. “Number three!” They clinked glasses.

  Kathryn’s cross-country tour had succeeded on every level.

  Her Golden Aerial Day broadcast set a new record of ratings for a midweek midday broadcast, so the suits were all smiles. The following week, Window on Hollywood entered the top-ten primetime radio shows nationwide, and in the first week of December, it lassoed the number three slot in the ratings, just behind Lux Radio Theater and The Walter Winchell Show.

  A few days after Kathryn returned from New York, Leo dropped his bombshell.

  The suits at NBC, Sunbeam Mixmaster, and Betty Crocker were extending a five-hundred-dollar bonus for every week she stayed in the top ten, and an extra five hundred for every week she beat Winchell.

  But Kathryn knew that her recent bump in ratings was just that. What she needed was a whammo-blammo guest that would compel listeners to tune in. A guest like Judy Garland.

  “To you!” Kathryn said, clinking Judy’s glass again. “It must be great to be back on top.”

  Judy waved to Eddie Bracken and his wife. “Between us chickens, it’s all been a bit overwhelming.”

  Three gulps into her Glenfiddich, Kathryn could feel her hangover dissipate. “But in a good way, right?”

  “Playing the Palace is a truly wonderful experience, but honestly, I don’t know how Ethel does it. She did Annie Get Your Gun for three years and only missed two shows. Can you believe that?”

  Kathryn curved her eyebrows upward into what she hoped was a beseeching-not-begging face. “Any chance I could lure you onto my radio show?”

  “I fly back Tuesday night.”

  So much for that.

  They talked shop for a while, about Lena Horne missing out on Show Boat, whether or not Lili St. Cyr’s arrest was a publicity stunt, how Gene Kelly’s new movie about Hollywood’s switch to sound was the talk of the MGM lot. Inevitably, Judy was dragged away, this time by June Allyson to settle a dispute between Dick Powell and Frank Sinatra over Lorenz Hart.

  An old Johnny Mercer tune, “Autumn Leaves,” floated overhead.

  Kathryn tried to catch Betty’s eye, but she was busy playing hostess. Over the past few years, she’d transformed the Bogart-Bacall home into a place where A-listers could show up, no makeup, no girdle, no toupee, and just be themselves.

  A solitary figure standing at the bookcase caught Kathryn’s eye.

  She picked a circuitous path, hoping she could see what book lay open in the actor’s hands, but it was impossible in the gentle lamplight. She drew close to him. “Surprising, isn’t it?”

  The guy wasn’t even thirty yet, but he exuded the power of General Patton—if Patton was dripping with enough testosterone to make every woman in the country swoon.

  “What?” he asked.

  Kathryn indicated the crammed shelves with her whiskey tumbler. “That Bogie would read Plato, Emerson, and Shakespeare.”

  The guy rolled his shoulders back to face her more squarely. “You can judge a person by the books on his shelf.”

  His dark eyes drank her in. The ice in her drink tinkled against the side of her glass; she steadied it with her other hand. “Uh-huh.”

  He held up Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. “One of my favorite poems is ‘I Sing the Body Electric.’ Do you know it?”

  What Kathryn knew about poetry could fill Thumbelina’s thimble. She shook her head.

  He intensified his stare with a penetrating scowl. “Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest. You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.”

  Kathryn had no idea what any of that meant, but it had the intended effect. She swallowed. Hard. “I see what you mean.”

  “Stirring, isn’t it?”

  “Just like your Streetcar performance.”

  The first time Kathryn had heard Marlon Brando’s name was when he hit it big on Broadway. After that, every other conversation started with, “Have you heard about this Brando guy burning up the Ethel Barrymore Theatre?” His photos showed a brooding actor with an impenetrable gaze, but it wasn’t until Elia Kazan’s movie version of A Streetcar Named Desire hit the screens that Kathryn saw what people were going gaga over. But now, with him standing two feet away from her, radiating star power like Clark Gable or Gary Cooper, she felt like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole.

  Brando allowed her a reticent smile. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Kathryn shifted her whiskey to her left hand and offered her right to him. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Kathryn Massey.”

  “I know who you are.” He held her hand like it was a delicate bird. “I’m surprised people like you are invited to shindigs like these.”

  The heat from his hand traveled up her arm. “The Bogarts and I have a history.” He raised an eyebrow and let go of her hand. “We’ve lived at the
Garden of Allah at several different times over the years. That’s the hotel up on Sunset. Have you been there?”

  Kathryn knew full well that Brando had never been to the Garden of Allah. If he had, it would’ve been the talk of the place.

  Brando shook his head. “Was that an invitation?”

  “Are you always this flirty?”

  Brando snapped the book shut and slipped it back into its place on the shelf. “Someone told me the only women I should flirt with are the four queens: Louella, Hedda, Sheilah, and you. She told me, ‘Charm them, and they’ll charm the world for you.’”

  “And who is this ‘she’?”

  “Irene.”

  Only the woman’s first name was necessary.

  Irene Mayer Selznick was the daughter of Louis B. and ex-wife of David O. She fled Hollywood for New York after her marriage ended and became a Broadway producer whose first play was the sensation of the ’47-’48 season. It solidified Tennessee Williams’ career and launched Marlon Brando into the stratosphere.

  “Irene is very level-headed,” Kathryn said. “I’d take her advice, if I were you.”

  “You know what else she told me?”

  Kathryn breathed in his scent: a heady mixture of coffee, loose tobacco, a musty cologne that reminded her of her lost love, Roy, and—oddly—amaretto, which clung to his clothes like sweat.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Irene said flirting wouldn’t work on you.”

  “What am I, made of ice?”

  Brando tilted his head back and bared his movie-star smile. “It was a compliment, Miss Massey. She thinks you’re too astute for that bullshit.”

  Between the tumbler of whiskey and the amaretto sweat, Kathryn could barely feel her face. She hoped to God she wasn’t blushing. Leo was a good man, kind, attentive, watched out for her interests, enthusiastic in bed. But for all that, he didn’t arouse the sort of heat radiating from this lady-killer. Then again, few men did, even in Hollywood.

  “I knew I liked Irene.” She threw off a laugh, shooting for Noel-Coward-esque mirth. “Mr. Brando, I have a radio show—”

  “Now that we’ve met, I’ll be sure to tune in some time.”

  In someone else, his insolence would have come across as uncouth, but in this beefcake with brains, it read as seductive.

  “The way you recited Walt Whitman just now—”

  “What of it?”

  “I was hoping you might agree to come on my show and recite ‘I Sing the Body Electric.’ Or perhaps some Shakespeare.” She’d heard Joe Mankiewicz hoped to film Julius Caesar and was considering Brando for Marc Antony.

  Brando’s smile dropped away like it’d been slapped off his face. “Do I look like a whore?”

  “What? No, of course not. I just thought—”

  “You thought that I’m like every other actor in this one-note town.” His voice cut through Peggy Lee’s “Why Don’t You Do Right?” “That I’ll do whatever it takes to get picked up like some two-bit streetwalker.”

  “Hold on a minute!” Kathryn set her empty glass down with a thump that turned heads. “I just thought—”

  “A guy hits big and everybody wants a piece of him. Well, fuck you, lady.” He suddenly looked as raw and jagged as Stanley Kowalski in the street with his t-shirt ripped from his torso. Brando took in the rest of the room. “And fuck ALL of you.”

  He shoved Kathryn into the bookcase and stormed out into the cold December night. The whole room stared at Kathryn. What the hell just happened? The only body in motion was Betty Bacall.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  Kathryn waved dismissively to everyone. “Everything’s fine!” Then to Betty, “Where’s your nearest powder room?”

  “Use the one upstairs, first door on the left.”

  The door opened into the master bathroom with his and hers sinks and thick green hand towels that matched the “Autumn in New England” décor. She took stock of her reflection in the mirror and castigated herself for not thinking further ahead than the end of her tour.

  She opened her handbag and pulled out her lipstick for a repair job, but she didn’t have the energy for even that. She wished she’d gone to Leo’s company Christmas bash at the Beverly Hills Hotel instead. The crowd there wouldn’t have half the sparkle of the people downstairs, but they wouldn’t be half the work, either.

  As she dropped her lipstick into her pocketbook, she scanned the headlines of the Washington Post on the counter. Its headline read VOSS WORKS UP LATHER FOR THE LORD.

  Kathryn snatched up the newspaper. The article reported on a tent revival in Washington, DC, held by Sheldon Voss, “the fervent evangelist dripping with liturgical sweat.” J. Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy had been in attendance, thus validating Voss’ campaign of moral righteousness.

  The article speculated that Hoover and McCarthy had received advance word of Voss’ announcement that next summer, he would be spreading his message in a transcontinental caravan called the “Sea to Shining Sea March.” Twelve stops were planned: Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Memphis, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Only, he didn’t call it Los Angeles, but the “Sodom and Gomorrah of these great United States,” and “a cesspit of sin and debauchery, filled with Communists and deviants whose souls I can hear crying out for redemption.”

  Kathryn flung open the bathroom door and strode into the hallway, almost colliding with Frank Sinatra.

  “Whoa, Nellie!” he laughed as she ran into his arms. “Is there a cattle stampede I oughta know about?”

  Flustered, all she could do was mumble an apology and tell him how nice it was to see him.

  “You didn’t let that bozo get to you, I hope?”

  “No, no,” she told him, “I was just feeling . . .” . . . an impending sense of doom called Uncle Sheldon.

  “Judy and I were chatting just now, and she told me that you’re in need.”

  “Of what?”

  “A guest. For your radio show.”

  Sinatra’s blue eyes glistened with anxiety. The guy was in an awful slump. The public hadn’t approved of the way he broke up his marriage to tie the knot with Ava Gardner, and he’d started his first run in Vegas at Desert Inn where, according to one report, he was “playing to half-filled houses of wildcatters and ranchers.”

  She smiled. “How does two songs and a comedy routine sound?”

  “For you, baby, I’ll stand on my head and juggle flaming swords while belching ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

  Oh my God, she realized, Sinatra’s more desperate than I am.

  CHAPTER 19

  When Hattie McDaniel walked into Chez Gwendolyn during the first week of 1952, Gwendolyn panicked, then mounted her blandest smile and welcomed Hattie and the friend who trailed behind her. “Let me guess,” Gwendolyn said. “Ella sent you?”

  Hattie’s full, round face broke into a smile as she trooped forward. “She told us you have so much loveliness on offer that we might not be able to choose.” Uncertainty flickered across her eyes.

  Gwendolyn ignored it.

  “Welcome! What sort of apparel are you looking for? Everyday street-wear? Formal? Performance?”

  “I’ve been asked to take over the role of Beulah in The Beulah Show now that they’ve moved production to Hollywood. Ethel Waters’ loss is my gain! I’m going to be doing a whole lot of press, so I need some pretty new duds.” Hattie called to her friend. “Dorothy? Come join us, darlin’.”

  Hattie’s friend was a slim, light-skinned girl, very pretty with a shy smile.

  “This is my friend, Dorothy Dandridge,” Hattie said, “or as I like to call her, Melmendi, Queen of the Ashuba.” She let out the high-pitched giggle she made famous as the O’Haras’ Mammy.

  Dorothy told Hattie to hush her big mouth.

  “Dorothy here is an actress, too,” Hattie explained. “And a mighty fine one, as she demonstrated earlier this year in Tarzan�
��s Peril.”

  “You’re never going to let me live it down, are you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “We can’t all have Gone with the Wind on our resume.”

  Hattie giggled again. “No, child, we sure ain’t. Dorothy sings like a dream and is working up an act to pitch around town in between films. So she’s going to need some stage outfits, like you did for Ella.”

  When Gwendolyn moved out from behind the counter, Hattie took in a full measure of her. “Have we met?”

  Gwendolyn shook her head and pulled out a poinsettia-red suit in shot silk. “I don’t have it in your size, but I could whip one up by the end of the week.”

  “You sew, too?” Dorothy held a floaty floor-length gown of white chiffon. It was several sizes too big for her, but it would pick up the spotlight at Ciro’s beautifully.

  “Anything you want,” Gwendolyn told her. “Maybe a strapless version of what you’ve got in your hand.” She faced Hattie again and held up the suit. “Something like this?”

  Hattie still wore a puzzled frown. She tsked several times. “I know your face.”

  The silver bell above the front door tinkled, saving Gwendolyn from having to confess.

  The three honey blondes who burst through the door cackling like extras on The Snake Pit were regulars Kathryn had dubbed the Tinseltown Triplets. Gwendolyn suspected they lived on cigarettes and black coffee, but they had excellent taste and bottomless allowances from their studio-exec husbands, who were probably schtupping starlets and secretaries right this very minute.

  “Hello, ladies,” she called out. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  They stopped just inside the door, their smiles fading as they took in the sight of Hattie and Dorothy.

  The triplet with the biggest bosom grimaced as though she were about to pass gas. “May we have a private word?”

  Hattie shoved the shot silk suit into Gwendolyn’s hand. “We’ll be taking our leave now.”

  It didn’t take Einstein to figure out what the “private word” was going to be. It was one thing to tell Ella Fitzgerald she was welcome when it was nine thirty at night, with nobody around. It was a whole other thing to take a stand in the full light of day from clients who dropped hundreds of dollars whenever their shopping itch demanded scratching.