by Anne Girard
She felt Chuck’s hand slacken in hers. When she glanced over, she saw the muscles tightening in his jaw. She had warned him about the farcical skit, and yet she could see that he was not amused.
“It was delightful, Baby,” Marino said from the backseat as Chuck drove them home from the theater afterward. “You really were very funny.”
“Thanks, Marino,” Harlean said quietly.
For every step forward she took in life these days, Harlean felt herself fall backward by two. A shining moment in her career was followed by an argument with Chuck. The thrill of a new job was a prelude to the gritty reality of Hollywood, reminding her that she was just another pretty extra—one who was not sought out for her ability to do comedy but to show her alluring backside.
It was all so confusing since, thanks to Stan and Babe, she had truly connected with the art of comedy and she wanted desperately to be good at it. She believed, if she studied more, practiced more—if people looked beyond her beauty and gave her a real chance, she could absolutely shine. But the predicament remained; she couldn’t get work without being alluring, but she would have to fight to be taken seriously because she was beautiful. She had to use her assets, whether she liked it or not.
One thing was certain to her now, Harlean was more determined than ever to fight. She wanted the challenge. She needed it.
When they all walked in the front door, Oscar was barking and the phone was ringing. “Get that will you, Baby?” her mother directed, as though she still lived there.
Harlean dashed for the receiver. It was her grandfather Harlow, the one whose love and money had supported them in Hollywood the first time. He was also the one who had primarily funded the plot of land on which she still fully intended to build their dream home. She loved him dearly, and was so excited to hear from him, until she heard that his tone was not a happy one.
“I’m as ashamed as I can be of you, Harlean Harlow Carpenter.”
She squeezed the receiver as her heart sank. He, too, refused to acknowledge her married name, which didn’t help.
“Grandpa, I—”
“I’ll tell you one thing, young lady. Neither Miss Clara Bow nor Miss Mary Pickford would ever be seen in a picture in their goddamn knickers!”
Marino opened a bottle of Champagne. The cork popped and Harlean jumped with a start at the sound. Her mother sidled up beside her in the dining room. “What’s he saying, Baby?” she whispered.
Stricken, Harlean looked at her mother. She finished the conversation that had been little more than a tongue-lashing in which Grandpa Harlow vowed not to send her another penny as long as she intended to be an actress. As she hung up the phone her eyes flooded with tears. The day had been too long for her to feel otherwise. Chuck came up beside her a moment later. He handed her a glass of Champagne and held one for himself in his other hand.
“Look at you. You’re white as a sheet. Your mother might be right, doll. I think it’s time for you to give up on the picture business. We all know that I’m a full-time job, as it is.”
He quirked a condescending look. In response, she shot her mother a desperate glance. Surely Mother, of all people, had not suggested something like that.
This career was her mother’s dream as much as her own.
“Mommie?”
Jean Bello’s tone was surprisingly calm and measured. “I just think perhaps the Roach Studios might not be the best place for you in your life right now.”
“But you’re the one who was there when I signed the contract!”
“Yes, I know I was, Baby, but I feel that things have changed.”
Harlean’s mouth went dry. This couldn’t possibly be her mother talking. She didn’t know how to react to this.
“What things have changed exactly?” She glanced at each of them in turn, her confidence rocked in the face of what could only be their collusion. “You both decided this for me?”
“The thing is, I’ve tried to support you, Harlean, but we have never fought so much as we have since you started working, and your mother thinks maybe it is best for you to bow out,” Chuck carefully said.
“But there is a contract.”
“Dear girl, contracts are made to be broken,” Marino blithely interjected as he joined them in the dining room, bearing his own glass of Champagne. “Your mother will find a way, that’s for certain.”
“Leave it to me, Baby,” Jean concurred with a self-confidence that suddenly made her shiver.
For the first time in a long time, her mother and Chuck exchanged a smile.
Marino slung his arm affably over Chuck’s shoulder then, which was almost too much for her to bear for all of the underlying tension that regularly existed between them. “Come, my boy, let’s the two of us leave our ladies to it, shall we?”
None of this made a bit of sense to her. She gulped her Champagne and headed toward the kitchen, intent on finding more. The two people she loved most in the world, trusted most, seemed suddenly to want something very different for her than what she wanted for herself.
Her mother followed her. She could smell her Shalimar perfume swirl around them. In the moment, for the first time, she despised the scent of it.
“I don’t understand at all. I’ve been working so hard. I thought you, of all people, believed I had potential to make something of myself.”
Jean lowered her voice. “And so I do, Baby. More than you will ever know.”
“Then why would you encourage Chuck to push me out of the business?”
Jean lowered her voice again and leaned closer. “Surely you know me better than that. I simply suggested he encourage you out of your Hal Roach contract.”
“But, why? They’ve been so good to me there and Double Whoopee was my biggest part yet.”
“A walk-on, Baby. You were the joke and the punchline. There is far more out there for you, I know it. And Mother is going to help you get it.”
Jean held her daughter’s shoulders and filled her gaze with conviction. “I have it all figured out. You turn eighteen next month and, after that, you won’t need Charles McGrew to cosign anything for you. We can make all of the decisions about your career, just the two of us.” Her mother was still gripping her shoulders, still locking her gaze. “There are five much more important studios who would clamor to have you now if they knew you were available. You’ve begun to create something of a buzz, and we need to keep that momentum going, not have you languishing in slapstick two-reel silent pictures when talkies are about to become all the rage.”
“You know Mr. Roach is going to start doing talkies.”
“Well, you will not be a part of those,” Jean said dismissively. “Tomorrow morning, you will march into his office, call up the appropriate quantity of tears and tell him that you need to retire from acting because it is ruining your marriage. Most men can’t bear to see a girl cry. I’ve done a bit of checking on Mr. Roach and, as it turns out, he is happily married with two small children. Unless I miss my educated guess, he will offer to tear up your contract to honor marriage and family.”
Despite her efforts to grow up and begin taking some responsibility for her life, Harlean felt like a child who had just fallen off the merry-go-round, one that had been spinning very fast. She was trying to understand this fully formed plan her mother had in mind, and she was trying to decide if it would be a good thing for her career, or for a marriage she was struggling to preserve.
“So, you want me to tell my husband that I’m quitting, only to turn around and sign on with a new studio after I turn eighteen?”
“Something like that.”
Jean looked around to make certain they were not being overheard. Then she continued. “A docile Charles is a far more manageable one. When the next contract from a studio comes our way, we simply tell Charles that things have changed, and that the o
ffer was too good to pass up. Once you are of age, he can’t complain, or stand in our way,” Jean further explained.
“Marino and I talked it all through this morning and we are going to act as your management team temporarily, so you needn’t worry a thing about any of that. Your job, Baby, is to stay beautiful. Which reminds me, it’s time to do those roots again. You must always put your best foot forward since you only have one chance to make that first impression.”
Harlean thought suddenly of the faded actress, Lula Hanford, who had befriended her on the day of her first extra work, and the similar advice she had offered.
“This is what you want, isn’t it? What we both wanted so dearly for you?”
Harlean thought of Chuck and her mother’s question lingered like smoke, wrapping itself around her heart. It was what a part of her wanted, even craved. She loved making her mother happy and she knew in her heart that she could be good at comedy, or really meaty dramatic roles, if she were ever given a chance to play them.
“If you and Marino find me a new contract, do you think you could help me tell Chuck?”
The sedate grin Jean had worn lengthened then. “You just leave everything to me, Baby,” she said.
* * *
That night, Harlean lay awake long after Chuck had fallen asleep, nestling close against his chest just to hear him breathing—and she silently tried to call up the feelings of great passion this nearness once had stirred within her.
He loved her, frightened her, surprised her and overwhelmed her. She could not imagine anything more powerful than that combination. But the strength of it, and the volatility behind it, was still wearing her down and making her question everything she thought she believed when they married. It was a doubt she was still tenaciously trying to conquer and to get past.
Perhaps she would take her mother’s suggestion and go to Hal Roach in the morning to plead with him for the sake of her marriage. At the moment, she felt she could make that a believably earnest request.
She knew how happy it would make Chuck to believe that she was going to stop working. If another contract with a more powerful studio came her way, then that would be fate. But she would deal with that when, and if, it happened. For now, one battle at a time seemed more than enough to manage.
Chapter Thirteen
On March second of 1929, Hal Roach released Harlean from her contract. The stated reason was in order to save her marriage. Before she left his office, he pulled her into a great, paternal bear hug and wished her the best.
“Now then, if circumstances change and you decide you’d like to start working again, you have only to phone my secretary, all right?”
She felt guilty tears pricking her eyes. “Thank you so much, sir. You’ve been very kind.”
“I don’t mind saying that I hate to lose you around here, Miss Harlow, you’re a real asset. But there’s nothing more important in the world than family. You take care of that young man of yours, hmm? And give him my regards.”
Roach was such a gentleman with her that Harlean cried in the car all the way back to Linden Drive. The tears she had shed in his office had not needed to be conjured. She had taken a risk, done the right thing. That was what her mother had said. So she wasn’t sure why every part of her felt regret. The next day, she turned eighteen.
She had never even had a chance to tell Babe goodbye.
In the weeks that followed her birthday, and with nothing to do all day, a restlessness settled back in on her. Harlean purchased a typewriter at a secondhand store. That idea for a novel had been rattling around in her head for a while, and if she wasn’t going to be an actress, she decided that the creativity inside her might be expressed in a different way. Books were such friends to her that she was suddenly determined to craft one of her own.
She set the typewriter up on the table, along with a stack of paper and cup full of freshly sharpened pencils for editing. The view of their charming little backyard through the kitchen window would inspire her. Oscar sat at her feet looking up and wagging his tail.
“All right, little man, you behave yourself now so I can concentrate,” she instructed him. “I intend to write two full chapters before Chuck gets home and I need to make his dinner. Is that clear?”
She did write the first chapter, after wadding up a number of pages and tossing them in the trash. She wanted to write a novel about what she knew. It would be the story of a young and glamorous Hollywood couple in the 1920s. She could draw on her mother’s experiences as well as what she knew from Rosalie and also their new group of friends. The next day, she wrote a second chapter before deciding that it was drivel and surrendering those pages to the garbage, as well. She had read enough books to know that something was missing from the writing. She could feel it.
“This is harder than I thought, Oscar,” she said on the third day.
The truth was that she hadn’t experienced Hollywood fully enough yet to tell a believable tale. But she couldn’t just sit at home and become a homemaker, or continue enduring the obligatory and endless shopping trips enjoyed by women of leisure, now that she had faced the challenges and tasted the rewards of a career. She wouldn’t dare admit it to Chuck, who seemed happier than ever, but she was already going a little stir-crazy at home alone all day.
After several additional weeks poised at her typewriter during every free moment, and with more crumpled up pages in the wastebasket than not, she accepted Rosalie’s invitation to lunch. “Now, what has you in such a stew, honey?” Rosalie asked as they sat in the same booth at the Brown Derby amid the noonday rush. “If you keep frowning like that you’re bound to get wrinkles!”
Since the termination of her contract with Hal Roach she had managed to find only one job as an extra at Fox. Chuck agreed to let her take it because there was no contract involved, and he was still surprised that he had gotten what he thought of as “his way” regarding her career. But now she was reduced, once again, to those dreaded shopping excursions and endless games of bridge over cocktails in the afternoon, since her novel, like her acting career, was at a full standstill.
“It’s just that my mother’s plan isn’t working. No studio has come up with an offer like she thought they would, I’m out of inspiration for my novel, and I’m going a little stir-crazy trapped home most of the day with the dog.”
“I’m sure Chuck is happy, though.”
“Deliriously,” Harlean groaned.
Rosalie’s eyes widened with surprise then as she glanced across to the table on the other side of the aisle. “Oh, my stars! Don’t look now too obviously at that man staring right at you, but do you know who that is?”
Harlean lowered her menu just enough to slide a careful glance in the direction of a balding, diminutive man in a business suit and horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He was sitting with two women. One was middle-aged and stout, the other was a brunette and clearly a starlet, or a girl who hoped to be.
“That’s Edwin Bower Hesser. I recognize him from the magazines.”
When Harlean did not react to the name, Rosalie leaned in closer. “He’s famous for taking artistic photographs of women that help them become stars.”
“By artistic, do you mean nude photographs?”
“Not always, no, but when he does they are like works of art. Very tasteful, honest. His photographs are really all the rage.”
Before she had finished her sentence, Hesser excused himself from his table, came across the aisle and addressed Harlean.
“Do pardon me please for interrupting your lunch, my dear, but I am a photographer and my wife and I noticed you immediately after you sat down. I wonder perhaps if you would consider speaking with us about the possibility of posing for me.”
The man extended his business card to her and made a dignified bow. “I am Edwin Hesser.”
“Harlean McGrew,”
she said, too stunned at the moment to remember the professional name she’d given herself.
She glanced down at the business card, then across at his luncheon table. His wife smiled and nodded. Chuck would be livid if she posed in anything less than a full ensemble. On the other hand, if what Rosalie said about him was true, it would be an incredible opportunity to pose for a photographer whose work was thought by Hollywood to be upscale and artistic. If his photographs had advanced the careers of other actresses this could be a turning point for her, as well.
And of course, her mother would be thrilled.
“Do you require all of your models to pose nude?” she asked, and then she felt her cheeks flush.
In response, he gave her a measured look. “I leave that up to the moment and the theme of the shoot.”
“Could my mother come with me?”
“Why, of course, my dear. While I make no excuses for being artistically drawn to the female form, my wife is always with me while I work. It’s all quite aboveboard, I assure you.”
Harlean tried to smile as he focused his gaze in on her more tightly, his eyes assessing her head, face, neck and chest. “My, you do have absolutely luminescent skin. And your hair is the precise shade of eiderdown.”
He didn’t speak flirtatiously. Rather, he seemed transfixed, even as waiters and new customers moved back and forth behind him. He was such an unassuming, serious little man with a gentle tenor voice. His eyes never left the study of her.
“When would you like her to call on you, Mr. Hesser?” Rosalie asked cheerfully, and Harlean knew she was only trying to help move things along.
She wasn’t certain what she would have done without Rosalie’s friendly intervention. The scramble of thoughts running through her mind was overwhelming. But an adventure did sound enticing, there was no denying that after these past dreary weeks.
“Nancy over there with my wife is my subject this afternoon, so we are free as soon as tomorrow. Why don’t you speak with your mother and, if she’s amenable, come by my office tomorrow at eleven. I would like to shoot you up in Griffith Park. There is an exquisite spot there that your look would suit perfectly.”
