City of Myths

by Martin Turnbull

  Ava pulled Marcus next to her. “Meet the photographer,” she said, blotting her tears before the smudged mascara leaked onto her snowy-white dress. “Joe Mankiewicz, I want you to meet Marcus Adler.”

  Mankiewicz’s handshake was firm. “Bette Davis has only the kindest words to say about you.” He guided him to a window draped in diaphanous silk. “You took those stills on Three Coins, didn’t you?”

  “I hope you liked them. Negulesco said—”

  “They helped me cast Rossano in this picture, so I have you to thank.”

  Ava let out a screech high enough to set dogs to barking. Marcus caught the word “panties,” but Bacall’s baritone laugh drowned out the rest.

  “Those photos you took of Ava,” Mank said, “they’re the sorts of stills I want for this production, so I’d like to hire you for that, but there’s also something else.”

  “You need help with the script?” Marcus asked, his hopes rising.

  “Rossano’s English was decent enough for Three Coins but I’m worried that American audiences might not understand him in this picture as well as they’ll need to.” Marcus didn’t know what The Barefoot Contessa was about, but if Joe Mankiewicz had written it, it was likely to be a witty, sophisticated script. “He’s especially self-conscious sharing the screen with Bogie and Ava, so I want you to coach him on pronunciation. If you’re around as production photographer you can help out whenever he’s feeling insecure. How does that sound?”

  Mank was asking him to commit to the end of March, by which time he’d have been gone from LA for eight months, which was seven months too long.

  “I can see you’re hesitating,” Mank said. “Is it a matter of pay? I have a discretionary fund I can draw from. Let’s call it one hundred a week for production stills, and another hundred to help Rossano with his English. I can pay you cash, dollars, or lira—whichever you prefer.”

  On the other hand, your Zanuck funds are running out.

  Marcus could draw on the Subway People windfall but he liked the “screw you, Conti brothers” quality to the notion of spiriting their money out of the country intact.

  Across the set, Ava drew a line along her lips. “The identity of my clandestine Italian lover must remain secret!”

  Marcus hadn’t been the focus of someone’s affection in a while. It was the little things that added up. Hearing the rhythmic breath of someone else in the bed. Looking for the pepper grinder and finding that someone was already passing it over. Knowing that his favorite Tuscan chianti would be waiting for him come dinnertime.

  Marcus could hear Kathryn’s voice in his head: Three more months of that sort of treatment? A boy could do worse.

  Marcus held out his hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  Mank shook it with his right hand and with his left, pulled a compact English/Italian dictionary out of his pocket. “This is yours now.”

  Since that day in the Villa Borghese gardens, Marcus had been meaning to look up a word he hadn’t encountered before. He flipped to the “S” tab.

  la speranza (noun) – the hope

  Domenico had described La Speranza as an actress who’d done well in a series of Roman epics.

  Marcus smiled. He knew of an actress who fit that description.

  Melody Hope.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip had long embodied the pinnacle of Hollywood nightclub glamor. During that time, many clubs had sparkled brightly for a while, then fizzled into obscurity. Gwendolyn had a theory about why Ciro’s had outlasted the competition: with its cream drapery and discreetly indirect illumination, everybody at Ciro’s looked like they benefited from the best lighting professionals in the business.

  But when she stepped into the club the evening of St. Valentine’s Day, Gwendolyn let out a yip of surprise.

  Judy Lewis peeked over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “It looks like Mocambo!”

  Contrasting with Ciro’s understated blend of creams, Mocambo was a riotous explosion of gay colors, as though Salvador Dali had been in charge of designing a Mardi Gras parade. Angelinos in search of an evening’s entertainment could never confuse the two.

  Until now.

  Intertwined streamers of candy-apple red and Kelly green hung from the ceiling in low-hanging loops. A series of clown masks, each of them two feet wide, leered their frozen smiles over the audience. Three papier-mâché tightrope walker puppets with gangling long limbs decked out in gold-spangled tights danced along thick twine stretched across the top of the stage.

  “Good grief!” The outburst came from Kathryn. “Do you think Kay knows about this?”

  Officially, Kay Thompson was the reason the “Gwendolyn Brick Party of Eight” were at Ciro’s. Their former Garden of Allah neighbor was now working the nightclub circuit as a solo and was making a splashy return to LA with a two-week run.

  “Yes, Miss Thompson knows, and she’s not terribly happy.” The Ciro’s maître d’ was the usual sort of meticulously groomed and unflappable type that places like these needed to keep drunken shenanigans to a minimum. He waved a dismissive hand toward the kitschy decorations. “The circus theme is for Darryl Zanuck. What it has to do with St. Valentine’s Day escapes me, but fortunately it’s only for one night.”

  Leo gave a snort. “If self-generating rumor is anything to go by, Zanuck’s bedroom prowess verges on the acrobatic, so there’s that.”

  The maître d’ smirked almost imperceptibly as he collected up eight menus. He led them to a table near the dance floor. Gwendolyn pulled at his elbow. “You should have a booking under Waterfield. Do you know where they’ll be seated?”

  The maître d’ indicated a four-top directly opposite them on the other side of the dance floor.

  Gwendolyn sat Judy Lewis at the center of the table, facing the room. “Kay is a force to be reckoned with and you don’t want to miss a second.”

  Gwendolyn’s date for the night was Quentin Luckett, who had recruited a suitable date for Judy. Jonathan Brady was a long-legged chap with an aw-shucks manner about him. Quentin had assured Gwendolyn that Jonathan was “suitable” because he had been the assistant choreographer on White Christmas at Paramount. “Assistant choreographer” was code for “gay as a goose,” which meant he could show Judy a good time without Gwendolyn worrying about slow-dance groping.

  Gwendolyn indicated that Quentin take the chair opposite her, with Brady taking the one across from Judy. Leo sat opposite Kathryn, and rounding out the party was Doris and her new beau, Emmett, a location scout at Columbia.

  The six-man band on the stage started playing a leisurely version of “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe.” Kay had done the original vocal arrangement for MGM, and half the crowd started humming along.

  Gwendolyn looked across to the Waterfield table. It still sat empty with only thirty minutes to show time.

  “Emmett,” she prompted, “tell Judy about your work on From Here to Eternity.”

  Doris had told Gwendolyn that, if the conversation lagged, she should ask Emmett to recount his From Here to Eternity story. He was the guy who’d found the beach where the steamy Lancaster/Kerr kiss took place. It was an interesting story and Emmett told it well—especially the part where the two of them were supposed to clinch standing up until Lancaster suggested they do it horizontally. “No great surprise considering the two of them were going at it hammer and tongs in between takes.” By the time he was done, the maître d’ had seated the Waterfield party.

  Bob Waterfield was married to Jane Russell and their guest was Clark Gable, whom Russell and Waterfield were wooing now that they’d formed a production company with the support of Howard Hughes. Waterfield and Clark rose to their feet when Clark’s date, a vacant-eyed starlet with a jumble of Betty Hutton-esque curls piled on her head, arrived at their table. As he resumed his seat, Clark proffered Gwendolyn a quick smile.

  The band changed to a jaunty “I Won’t Dance.” Gwendolyn pulled at a
n earlobe. It was the signal she’d arranged with Jonathan.

  “Miss Lewis?” He extended his hand across the table. “Would you give me the pleasure?”

  “Miss Brick?” Quentin extended his hand too. “A whirl around the dance floor, if you please?”

  Gwendolyn and Quentin joined the Gary Coopers and the Randolph Scotts quickstepping around the Ciro’s floor. She followed Clark’s eyes as he watched Brady rotate his daughter into an effortless series of turns.

  “Your friend Jonathan was a perfect choice,” she told Quentin.

  “He’s a big Loretta Young fan, so I hardly had to talk him into it.”

  Quentin launched into a story about how James Stewart’s wife was fretting that Grace Kelly would seduce her husband during the filming of Rear Window. But Gwendolyn listened with only one ear.

  She watched Clark invite his giggling date to the dance floor as the band changed to “The Tennessee Waltz.” When they swished past, Clark winked at her and mouthed “Thank you.”

  Quentin dug a knuckle into Gwendolyn’s back. “What’s going on with Gable? He thanked you for—wait a cotton-pickin’ . . .!” His eyes bounced between Judy and Gable, then back to Gwendolyn. “Those rumors are true?”

  The bandleader faced the microphone and asked that everybody take their seats as Miss Thompson’s show was beginning shortly.

  Gwendolyn led Quentin back to their table as loud rata-tat-tat laughter discharged from a large group swarming the entrance. Darryl Zanuck beamed like a victorious despot dressed in an expensive tux, his black silk bowtie already skewed to one side. On his left stood his wife, Virginia, a narrow-faced woman with the air of someone more suited to running a church bazaar and who was conspicuously no competition for the statuesque beauty in a snug gown of sapphire silk who stood at his right elbow.

  Gwendolyn tilted her head toward Kathryn. “Is that Bella Darvi?”

  “All thirty-eight, twenty-two, thirty-six of her.”

  The Zanuck party filed into the room, shrieking with laughter fueled by several robust pre-show cocktails. They tottered toward a pair of long parallel tables and took their seats, and the house lights dimmed to a drum roll.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Ciro’s proudly presents the incomparable Miss Kay Thompson.”

  Kay strutted onto the stage dressed in white: a clinging long-sleeved top sprinkled with champagne-colored bugle beads, accented with chunky silver jewelry, white pants, and open-toed high heels.

  “Hello, Hollywood!” she boomed into the mike. “Did you miss me?”

  The crowd roared its reply. As it was dying down, a male voice yelled, “Like a dose of penicillin!”

  Kay’s head fell to one side, but she salvaged her composure in a split second.

  “I’ve just come from Chicago, and I must say, that song got it right. It really is a toddlin’ town. On my first night there, I—”

  “—pushed the Williams Brothers into the river?”

  It was common knowledge among this crowd that Kay had recently ended an affair with a member of her back-up group.

  “Into the river?” Kay pursed her lips into a mock frown. “Why? Did the Chicago Police Department find any bodies?” The quip got a huge laugh. “So anyway, my first night in Chicago, I was in my hotel room—”

  “Not for long, I bet!”

  Kay shielded her eyes and peered into the audience. “The a-hole with the cake-hole—you wanna come up here and say that?”

  Kay blinked several times as Zanuck stepped onto the stage. She’d called one of the most powerful men in Hollywood “an a-hole” and there he was, a huge cigar jammed into the side of his mouth, his arms thrust out wide, and a yep-it’s-me grin on his puss.

  “So, Mister Zanuck, is there a reason why you’re stomping all over my act?” She ran a hand over her white-blonde hair. “Is it because I resemble Marilyn Monroe so uncannily that several pints of scotch has you a mite confused?”

  He unplugged the cigar and blew a torrent of smoke into her face. She mugged clear of it by stumbling around the stage like a drunken hobo. The shtick brought some laughs but Zanuck frowned at her.

  “You sayin’ I can’t hold my liquor?”

  “Not at all,” Kay replied. “I’m merely left to question whether your liquor can hold you.”

  Flummoxed by her rejoinder, he looked up at the trapeze hanging over their heads. “I bet I can do five chin-ups in a row.”

  Zanuck forced his cigar into her hand—she held it between two fingers like it was a lighted stick of dynamite—and looked on, horrified, as Zanuck shrugged off his jacket, undid his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt.

  By the time he was naked from the waist up, the thirty people at his table were clapping their encouragement with a rhythmic beat. Virginia Zanuck sat with her hands in her lap, her face stony with disapproval. A chant revved up around her. “Go! To! Five! Go! To! Five!”

  Eyeing his trim waist and firm chest, Gwendolyn was impressed with how well a guy in his fifties had kept himself—especially someone who smoked like a forest fire, drank like a whale, and feasted like an emperor.

  He reached for the trapeze with one arm. “Single-handed!” He pulled his chin to the bar once. Twice. Halfway to the third try, his arm started to wobble. He hovered at the midway point, the muscles across his shoulder stippled with effort. He let out a raw moan and dropped onto the stage.

  “A damn fine effort, don’t you think?” Kay asked the audience.

  They applauded, puncturing their approval with wolf whistles, but Zanuck kept his head down as he collected his clothes off the floor.

  Kay swung around to the audience. “How about a song?”

  The bandleader launched the orchestra into a number Kay had written called “Hello, Hello.” The crowd identified it from the opening bars and endorsed it with a thundering ovation.

  Gwendolyn watched Zanuck slink off to a dark corner where he could reassemble his wardrobe unobserved.

  “Don’t worry, Darryl dear,” Kathryn murmured in Gwendolyn’s ear, “you’ve impressed your mistress in front of your wife and that was the whole point.”

  * * *

  Kay’s act was fast and funny, punctuated with zingers and improvised put-downs that her audience devoured like starving paupers. Though not as vocally talented as the stars she coached, she could put over a song with enough zing to gloss over her shortcomings. By the time she finished, she’d wrung every laugh and gasp that could possibly be squeezed from her seen-it-all audience.

  When the house lights came up, the first person to catch Gwendolyn’s eye was Quentin. She turned away from him. “Hey Leo, Kathryn tells me you know how to cut a rug.”

  “You don’t need to ask me twice.”

  Jonathan assumed that was his cue too, and asked Judy to dance.

  The two couples joined the swirling floor to a cha-cha version of Peggy Lee’s “Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me.)”

  Every eyeball in the place was trained on the next couple to join the floor: Clark Gable and Jane Russell. In three-inch heels, Jane perfectly matched Gable’s six-foot-one, and together they capered like a pair of teens.

  As the song drew to an end, Clark whispered into Jane’s ear. She nodded and they broke apart. It took her three steps to reach Leo.

  “I do like how you cha-cha!” He cast Gwendolyn adrift without fanfare. Clark gathered her in his arms and foxtrotted into a mirror-smooth version of “Summertime.” Dimples pitted each cheek. “I appreciate this more than you could know.”

  “But why didn’t you get Jane to cut into Jonathan and let you dance with Judy?”

  The grin washed away. “I don’t want to upend the girl’s life. Her mother’s a mighty fine woman but she’s acutely aware of how this would look.”

  “Speaking as a girl who grew up with no father,” Gwendolyn said, “I should remind you that flames can warm a girl instead of scorch her.” He quizzed her silently with his gray-green Rhett Butler eyes. “I’m also fairly positive that she has no idea who
her father is.” Gwendolyn felt Clark’s body jolt. “Are you prepared for when she asks you why nobody told her?”

  The song came to an end and their momentum petered out. Someone behind her caught his attention. He collected up her right hand and kissed it. “A pleasure, Miss Brick.”

  Zanuck swept her into a waltz. A fog of Scotch whiskey hovered. “Are you fucking him?”

  “No, Mr. Zanuck. I am not.”

  “Did you used to fuck him?”

  “What you saw was simply a thank-you dance for a recent favor.” She ignored his skeptical squint. “What’s with the third degree?”

  “I want you to do me a favor.” He emphasized the word “me” by pressing his stocky frame to her body.

  She angled away as best she could in his tight grip and told him, “When I found out Marilyn was marrying DiMaggio, you were the first person I called.”

  “I want to sign Gable to a two-picture deal. Soldier of Fortune and The Tall Men are perfect for him. His MGM contract still has months to run, but I’m told Gable hates Dore Schary with every fiber of his precious being. No amount of money will convince him to stay.”

  “He wouldn’t listen to me,” Gwendolyn insisted. “And why should he?”

  “I saw the way he danced with you.”

  “He’s a good dancer. That’s all you saw.”

  “I saw more than that.”

  The last of Gwendolyn’s patience leaked away. “You must have hundreds of people at your disposal—why pick on me?”

  “Because I trust you.”

  Gwendolyn could perceive no agenda buried behind his eyes. “You and I have had a few conversations but I hardly think any of them were long enough for you to—”

  “Between the Supreme Court anti-trust decision that forced the studios to break from our theater chains and the encroachment of television, my job gets harder and harder. I navigate all this purely on instinct. Screenwriters, actors, craftsmen—the only trait they have in common is that they’re people. I form my opinions based on gut reactions and I go with it. And mine says that you’re the person to help me get Gable. Talk him into coming to see me and I’ll do the rest.”