Gwendolyn looked from Grainger to a figure standing on the side of the dance floor. Kathryn waved at her with the white patent leather clutch purse Gwendolyn had given her the previous Christmas. Gwendolyn’s hand flew to her mouth.
Grainger continued, “And I quote: TO MISS GWENDOLYN BRICK STOP CONGRATS STOP YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN IN TOP TWENTY FIVE OF WARNER BROS FACE OF FORTIES COMPETITION STOP FULL LETTER TO FOLLOW SOON STOP”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the finalists for Warner Brothers’ Face of the Forties: Miss Gwendolyn Brick!”
As the crowd cheered, Grainger handed her the telegram, but the letters on the paper were meaningless squiggles. Her eyes drifted over to Alice’s table. Alice and Eldon were the only people in the room not applauding.
CHAPTER 20
Kathryn chewed her lips as Francine cast her gaze across Ciro’s from her side of the table. When her mother disapproved of any aspect of a restaurant—décor, menu, music, service—all other facets were found wanting by association. Kathryn needed this dinner to go well.
If the nightclub gods were smiling upon Ciro’s, it was because Billy Wilkerson had set out to create Hollywood’s most glamorous venue. The walls were draped in creamy damask with indirect lighting hidden behind the high-backed leather banquettes. It made for lighting both soft and flattering enough to please even the vainest patrons. And so they came, in droves, every night.
Wilkerson permitted Kathryn to host anyone she wanted as often as she liked, and to put it all on the house tab. She was somewhat surprised at his largesse, as the atmosphere around the office had become a tad testy of late. He continued his harangue of Orson in his Op Ed pieces, but Kathryn suspected it had more to do with the fact that he was about to turn fifty and was getting a jump on his Grumpy Old Man phase. Kathryn didn’t agree with anything Wilkerson had to say on the subject of Orson, but decided that saying nothing made for an easier work life.
Francine unfolded her starched linen napkin and pressed it into her lap, then made a show of surveying the restaurant. It was only half full but Kathryn knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. “This is all very impressive.”
Kathryn let herself breathe again. “I’m glad you like it. Wilkerson told me the secret to a successful nightclub is the lighting. When people go out, they need to feel attractive. Especially this crowd.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Francine sniffed. “You should hear some of the demands we get at the Marmont.”
The waiter took their drink orders. They were still looking over the menus when Francine said, “You’re here quite often, I expect.”
“A couple of times a week,” Kathryn replied. She was about to launch her speech with the line she and Marcus had worked out when Francine surprised her again.
“Do you bring your married man here?” Francine said it lightly, but her eyes had turned dense as marble.
Kathryn pressed her hands on the white linen tablecloth. “That relationship ended a while ago.”
Francine kept her eyes on her menu. “I think I’ll start with the green turtle au sherry soup, and then the Long Island duckling bigarade.”
Kathryn stared at her menu, barely able to take in the choices. She had never discussed Roy with her mother. She’d let a few things slip here and there, enough to let her mother know that she had someone in her life. But she’d never mentioned him by name or suggested that she meet Roy. There wasn’t much point—what mother would approve of her daughter seeing a married man? The fact that Francine knew Roy was married astounded Kathryn and forced her to assume Francine knew about Orson, too. Orson still lived at the Chateau Marmont, and Kathryn presumed the gossip was as robust there as it was at the Garden of Allah. “I’m going with the Sardines Cote d’Azur and the Lobster Newburg.”
“YOOHOO!” Tallulah Bankhead’s baritone boomed across the room like a cannon. Oh, dear God. For all her charms and wit, Tallulah Bankhead was the last person Kathryn wanted to see right now. Behind Tallulah trailed a striking woman in a sharply tailored dark purple suit, blonde but not in a sexpot way. Kathryn stood as they approached the table.
“Darling!” Tallulah exclaimed. “It’s been so fucking long since I’ve seen you that I could fucking die!” She enveloped Kathryn in her arms long enough for Kathryn to smell the tang of last night’s booze. “Oh, but where are my manners?”
She yanked her companion by the elbow. “Darling, I want you to meet my new best friend in the world. This is Agnes Moorhead. Aggie, this is my Kathryn.” The woman’s face was all intelligent angles over cool personality. “Aggie is the most breathtakingly brilliant actress. Part of the Mercury Theater. Orson Welles and all his fabulous lot. Come to think of it, I’m surprised the two of you haven’t met already.” She spotted Francine and thrust out her hand. “Tallulah Bankhead, darling. Charmed to meet me, I’m sure.”
“This is my mother, Francine Massey,” Kathryn said.
Tallulah smiled perfunctorily and turned back to Kathryn.
“I’m here to give you fair warning,” she said. “Dear old Dad is going to kick it any day now, poor little mite. I shall, of course, be utterly devastated, so when the inevitable descends upon me, it shall be your shoulders on which I shall be seeking to cry.” She nudged Francine with her elbow. “Your daughter is the very personification of the Rock of Gibraltar, but of course you’re her mother so I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.” Barely stopping to draw breath, Tallulah faced Agnes. “We really shouldn’t keep your friend waiting much longer. Tell me his name again? Joe . . . Linen? Wool?”
Poker-faced, Agnes said, “Cotten. Joseph Cotten. If we hurry, we’ll only be an hour late.” Tallulah distributed a flurry of air kisses and departed just as a new couple entered the nightclub.
Louis B. Mayer turned heads every time he entered a room, especially one filled with top-drawer industry people like this one. Kathryn knew his appearance here marked the arrival of Ciro’s at the top of the social stack.
On his arm was a girl dolled up in a heliotrope gown trimmed with pastel-green feathers that swirled like mist around her legs. Enveloping her shoulders was an evening wrap of gray-and-white-striped fur, and from her ears dangled diamond earrings the size of small candelabras. She pretended not to notice the effect she had on the crowd.
“That’s Melody Hope, isn’t it?” Francine asked.
It most certainly is, Kathryn thought. Kathryn and Melody had become friendly when Melody shot to stardom in the role of Nellie Bly in The Pistol from Pittsburgh. Melody was a minister’s daughter from a solid home with loving parents, and struck Kathryn as being sensible and grounded in a way that so many actresses weren’t. After The Pistol from Pittsburgh hit big, MGM rushed her into a terrific knockabout comedy with Ray Bolger called I Spy with my Little Eye, and then a Robert Taylor drama about a squadron of bombardiers. Both movies had gone over big with the public and MGM was maneuvering her to become America’s next sweetheart.
But tonight she was decked out like a Crawford or a Dietrich. Oh, Melody, Kathryn thought, and here I was thinking you’d managed to avoid falling into the whole “obnoxious star” routine.
Champagne arrived at Mayer’s table and Melody finished hers off in three mouthfuls. Mayer said something, indicating the empty glass, and they both let out a laugh hearty enough to be heard across the nightclub. Only Mayer’s laugh sounded genuine to Kathryn.
Melody downed her second glass just as quickly. The music changed to a recent Tommy Dorsey hit—“In the Middle of a Dream”—and Mayer motioned toward the dance floor. The pair launched into a waltz with virtually all eyes on them.
Having danced with Mayer many times, Kathryn knew how focused the man was on the work at hand. She hadn’t heard from him lately, and now she could see why. She knew Mayer well enough to know that he didn’t care for the way Melody played up to the audience with a swoop of the pink silk handkerchief in her left hand. Kathryn watched him lead her through two more dances, after which he escort
ed her back to the table. She picked up her handbag and headed toward the powder room.
“Well,” Francine commented, “someone knows how to put on a show.”
Kathryn eyed the door leading to the restrooms and grabbed her purse. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
When she opened the door to the ladies’, Kathryn found Melody sitting alone in the circular anteroom that was outfitted with baby-pink suede sofas built into the wall. She had both shoes off and was rubbing her right foot. She looked up to see Kathryn and smiled. But it was a shaky sort of smile; Melody was drunker than two champagnes’ worth.
“If I had known he was going to ask me to dance, I wouldn’t have worn these shoes. I love them, but boy, how they pinch.”
Kathryn sat down beside her. “You go out on a date with Mayer, and dancing is guaranteed.”
“Oh my heavens, it was pure torture out there.”
“It looked like you were having a wonderful time.”
Melody let out a grunt. “It’s called acting.”
Kathryn gently grabbed the girl’s foot, brought it to her knee and started to massage it. “This must be your first date with Mr. Mayer.”
“First public one, anyway.” Melody burst into a giggle.
Kathryn stared at the girl. “Oh, Melody,” she said. “You’ve got enough talent to make it without resorting to . . . that.”
“You don’t know what it’s like in a place like MGM!” Melody snatched her foot away. “They all play lovey-dovey to the outside world, but once the gates are closed? Oh! The competition! When a good part comes along, it’s like a shark pool at feeding time. No place for the faint of heart, let me tell you. Do not get me started on what I had to do to get the lead in Bobby’s Bombardiers.”
Kathryn pressed her finger under Melody’s chin and turned her face upwards. “There are a hundred ways—”
“There is a part coming up in a new picture about William Tell, and the word’s out that it’s better than Olivia’s in Robin Hood. You should see the scheming going on. Takes the term ‘dirty pool’ to a whole new basement.”
“I know all about William Tell,” Kathryn said. “My best friend is writing it. But Melody, honey, do you really—”
“Kathryn, I value your opinion. Honest, I do. But you know the way the game is played. To Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public, we’re these paragons of virtue, but in reality it’s every girl for herself. If this is what I need to do to get on the inside track, then so be it.”
“Melody, I know married men have a certain sort of appeal. All of the fun and none of the commitment.”
Melody arched a jaded eyebrow and stood up to check her stockings in the gilt-edged mirror beside her. “I just moved to a new place, the Garden Court Apartments.” The Garden Court was a high-class block of apartments west of the Hollywood Hotel. Each apartment had its own baby grand piano and Oriental rugs. As Melody wafted a hand in the general direction of Hollywood Boulevard, a pair of tiny diamond-studded palm trees dangling from her charm bracelet clinked together. “Yesterday, I got talking to one of my neighbors. He directs screen tests at Columbia. Told me he used to live over near the Olympic Stadium right next to a certain Roy Quinn. So don’t lecture me about married men, okay?”
Kathryn closed her eyes. Orson isn’t the only one who needs to be reminded that Los Angeles is an overgrown village.
Kathryn stood up and looked Melody in the eye. “You’re an adult now,” she said. “Especially in a getup like that. You look like a million bucks. Please forgive me.”
“Thank you,” Melody said, smiling. “Now would you please do me a favor and take Louie off my hands? I simply cannot go another lap with him.”
* * *
Mayer had squired Kathryn around the dance floors of all the night clubs in Hollywood. They had a strictly dinner-and-dance arrangement, which Mayer had never tried to violate with romantic overtures and Kathryn had never tested for industry gossip. Unhindered by hidden agendas, they’d built up a smooth and natural dance chemistry. Kathryn appreciated his innate sense of rhythm and he admired her stamina. It’d been a while since their last date, but it felt like they’d danced just last week.
“I’d almost forgotten how easy it is with you.” Mayer let out a showy sigh. “Some women are a whole lot of effort.”
“So are some men,” Kathryn replied.
He smiled at her knowingly, then said, “How’s your friend Hilary?”
It took Kathryn a moment, and when she realized who Mayer was asking about, it hit her like a crosstown bus. It’d been nearly a year since she wrote about the Wind preview. “She’s fine,” Kathryn replied evenly. “Why do you ask?”
Mayer held on to his knowing smile for an uncomfortably long string of moments. “Never mind about her,” he said. “There is something I’d like to ask you.”
Please, anything but Hilary van Hoss. “Shoot.”
“I’ve heard Orson Welles is working on his first script for RKO.”
“He and Herman Mankiewicz have hidden themselves away,” Kathryn said. “Apparently the first version came out at two hundred fifty pages. Not even Orson wants to make a four-hour movie.” She nodded at Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck as they quick-stepped past.
“I also hear it’s about Hearst,” Mayer said.
Kathryn took her time replying. It was bad enough she’d lied to Mayer about her fake pal, but if it turned out that Orson’s movie really was about Hearst, this conversation would bounce back and bite her on the ass.
“I was at a Hollywood Women’s Press Club luncheon when Orson told Hedda that if he was going to make a movie about anyone, it’d be modeled on Joseph Pulitzer.”
“I heard the same story,” Mayer said.
“So—?”
“So here’s my problem: Welles is calling his movie American.”
“And why is that a problem?”
“Joseph Pulitzer was born in Hungary.”
Kathryn eyed Mayer and Mayer eyed Kathryn while the lush strings of “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” swirled around them. Neither of them said a word.
CHAPTER 21
The first person Gwendolyn saw when her taxi pulled up outside the Warner Bros. studio was Alice. By the time Gwendolyn stepped onto the sidewalk, she was hovering like a locust. They’d only spoken once since that night at the Cocoanut Grove, and even then Gwendolyn could have sworn it was only to check what she would be wearing today.
“We’ve got stiff competition,” Alice said, tilting her head toward the girls gathered outside a door marked “Visitors.”
Blondes, brunettes, redheads, wide faces from the Midwest, sultry pouts from down South, every type was represented and every one a knockout. And all of them noticeably younger than Gwendolyn. She’d been looking forward to this day for nearly two months, but now she felt like the village idiot. To think the Powers That Be would choose her over any of these teenagers.
At the appointed hour, a guy with black hair teetering on the descent into grey stepped through the door.
“Ladies,” he said, “my name is Bill Brockton and I’ll be your escort through your day with us. Please be sure to stay with the group at all times.”
They were well inside the lot when Gwendolyn realized she knew this guy. Bill Brockton was the first studio employee she’d met in Hollywood; on the train ride out from Florida, the guy she sat next to—what was his name? Hammer something?—told her to contact him. She had, but nothing came of it. Gwendolyn remembered him being as painfully thin as Ritchie.
Gwendolyn winced at the thought of poor Ritchie Pugh, who had gotten himself into the worst possible jam. If she knew how to contact him, she would, but perhaps it was best she didn’t. These days, the papers were constantly implicating Siegel’s direct involvement in the still-unsolved Greenberg gangland killing. The further she kept from Ben Siegel, the better.
The group rounded the corner of a huge soundstage and bumped into Humphrey Bogart. The girls twittered around him like baby spar
rows. He’d just scored a hit in a George Raft movie, They Drive by Night; everyone around the Garden was calling it a star-making role. Gwendolyn turned to Brockton. “I don’t suppose you remember me?”
“When I saw your photograph it took me a few minutes.” He’d filled out in the years since Gwendolyn had seen him and looked healthier now that he’d put on a few pounds. “You’re looking real swell.”
“Say, did you ever track down your pal? What was his name?”
“Eugene Hammerschmidt? Yeah. Getting on the first train out of town was the best thing he coulda done. He owns a chain of movie houses around Dallas. Got himself a nice wife, pack o’ kids, two-car garage: the whole cheeseburger with all the fixins. Meanwhile, look at us two. Still here!” He turned to the girls fluttering around Bogie. “Ladies, I think we’ve taken up enough of Mr. Bogart’s time. Let’s move on.”
Brockton herded them into one of the smaller soundstages. In the corner stood a simple set made up of the sort of fireplace found in every home across the country. Pistachio-green-and-cream-flocked wallpaper, a pair of late-Victorian chairs with lace doilies on the headrest, a midnight-blue Persian carpet underfoot, and a Maxfield Parrish landscape print on the fake wall.
Brockton introduced a gruff man in his fifties who explained that they’d each get a minute in front of the camera, where they’d be asked a different question. He reminded them that none of the big Hollywood stars got where they were by being someone else.
He took the group behind the set and led them to a table loaded with pots of coffee and plates piled high with snacks. “In honor of today, I got the studio to spring for the works,” he announced. “This is all for you, girls, so dive in.”
They gravitated toward the table. One girl joked that she’d been starving herself for two weeks. “I’ve managed to stay clear of every donut, sundae, French fry, cake and cookie between here and Hades. Now it comes down to the crunch and look at what they serve us.”
Citizen Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 3) Page 15
