by Anne Girard
“Check out the tomato,” one young technician said beneath his breath. “Yeah, and take a look at those gams,” another chuckled.
She saw Arthur Jacobson, the assistant director, look up at the sound. “What in the Sam Hill is she wearing?” he asked his assistant, who was sporting horn-rimmed glasses and a smug smile.
“I’d say it’s more what she isn’t wearing, sir.”
The sound of muffled laughter followed. It occurred to Harlean that perhaps her favorite dress was more revealing than she had intended it to be for the occasion. True, she was feeling liberated, and she had planned to wear it for Roy after the shoot today, but she might have pushed it too far for work.
“Show Miss Harlow to Wardrobe, Sam,” Jacobson said with an exaggerated scowl.
As she passed by the set, she heard a woman with a strong New Jersey accent call out. “Are you kiddin’ me? Oh, not a chance that girl’s gonna be in this picture! I want her out, Arthur. Fire her!”
Harlean didn’t need to turn around to see that the angry voice belonged to the star, her mother’s idol—sassy redheaded It Girl, Clara Bow.
Her confidence was shaken by the time she walked into the costume department with the assistant, who continued to grin the entire time they walked.
“This is Jean Harlow, Miss Head. She’s playing Hazel in the picture.”
A plain-faced woman of about thirty, with short, jet-black hair and a sharp fringe of bangs, looked up from her needle and thread. To Harlean’s relief, her smile seemed genuine. “Call me Edith.” She set the costume down onto her worktable. As she stood, she extended her hand and offered an affable shake. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got here for you.”
She went to a costume rack marked The Saturday Night Kid, the movie’s title. Each hanger bore a character name pinned to the front of it. She glanced back at Harlean, gauging her size.
“I’d like to put you in this one,” she said in a low voice, pulling out a slinky, gray, bias cut dress with a shawl collar. “I designed it for Miss Bow, but she’s gotten too fat to wear it.”
Harlean could already tell that Edith Head was a clever and savvy woman competing in a man’s world here at the studio, and she seemed to be doing it with flair. That was something to respect. The dress she’d designed was striking.
After Harlean had donned her own costume, she returned to find the set in an uproar. Bow was still irate, stalking back and forth in front of the director, who had his hands out in a pleading gesture. James Hall, who everyone called Jimmy, appeared to be explaining things to the other woman in the cast, whose name was Jean Arthur.
“Be reasonable, Clara. We start shooting this morning. I don’t have the time or the budget to recast.”
“To hell with reasonable, Arthur! I’m askin’ ya who’ll see me next to her?”
The fragile tone of the question, even though spoken in anger, struck Harlean. It had never occurred to her that a legitimate star could feel an ounce of insecurity when faced with a bit player. She lingered near Jimmy, trying not to move or make things worse.
“I’m sorry, Clara. I called up to the offices. It’s a no-go. The girl stays.”
Bow huffed in response. She finally turned and met Harlean’s shocked gaze. “What are you staring at? You look like a goddamn China doll, and I’ll bet you know it, too, doncha?”
Harlean pushed away a sarcastic retort and summoned up a sunny smile instead. The next moments were critical. She knew they could change the entire path of her career.
“It’s a real honor to meet you, Miss Bow. I’ve seen every one of your pictures. Most of them I’ve seen twice. You really are the best actress around.”
The silence was a palpable thing as Bow eyed her suspiciously. “Is that so?”
“Oh, it is! You were really swell in Get Your Man, and in Wings. I thought you were downright brilliant.”
Everyone knew that the war epic Wings had won the first Academy Award ever for Best Picture three years ago.
Harlean could see the anger slowly slipping from her face. Still, no one dared to speak a word as the two young women confronted one another like rivals—one, the ultimate actress, the other an unparalleled beauty. Thankfully, her mother had taught Harlean the art of flattery.
Bow softened her expression in the face of Harlean’s fawning. “That was a man’s picture and I was nothin’ but whipped cream on top of the pie.” The crew cautiously began taking their places. Bow moved a step nearer. “I’m Paramount’s biggest star, ya know, so they rewrote that whole damn script to accommodate me.”
“They knew what they were doing,” Harlean remarked.
“So...how do you get your hair that color? It looks just like a cotton ball.”
“It’s pretty painful, honestly. And the smell could chase away the devil.”
Bow laughed at that.
The commotion around them increased as the crew, sensing a lessening of the tension, slowly returned to normal. James passed by and winked at Harlean in support. She drew in a small breath and continued to smile back sweetly at the star.
“You ever been in a motion picture?” Bow asked.
“Nothing like you, Miss Bow. And never a talkie.”
“Me, either. Pretty damn terrifying. Don’t tell anyone though, hmm?”
Harlean crossed her heart. “I promise.”
After they shot the first few scenes, Bow invited Harlean to sit beside her on set as the crew set up for the next shot. Clara Bow’s chair had her name embroidered on the back. Harlean could not begin to imagine what that kind of acclaim would feel like.
“I’m sorry I gave you such a rough time earlier,” Clara said as she gazed out past the cameras. “I got myself into such a state over being in a talkie that I’ve been consoling myself with a little too much spaghetti lately. Couldn’t even fit into my costume yesterday. How’s that for a bucket of cold water poured over the big-time movie star?” she said with surprising self-deprecation.
“Miss Bow, you’re beautiful!”
“Well, thanks, kid. But even ten pounds lighter I sure as hell couldn’t hold a candle to you in the looks department. You’re goin’ places, I can feel it.”
“You’re a star, Miss Bow, and I’m a bit player. Girls like me are a dime a dozen around this town.”
She smiled as she settled her gaze on Harlean. “Call me Clara, first of all, and let’s see if we can change that, because there ain’t nothin’ ordinary about you. In fact, come with me, I have an idea. We have a little time before they’re ready for us.”
With that, she stood and took Harlean’s hand in a firm grip.
Bow then led her across the lot and into the costume department where Edith and several male designers were working with seamstresses on an array of ensembles for different films.
“Edith, where’s my dress? The one you have to pour me into.”
Edith, who was wearing thick black eyeglasses now, pushed down onto the tip of her nose, glanced up. Seeing the star, she shoved her chair back and shot to her feet.
“Over there on the rack, Miss Bow, I’ll get it for you. I haven’t started working on it yet, though, since they said they wouldn’t be shooting you in it this whole first week.”
“Good, since Jean is going to wear it in the picture, not me, and she can fit into it just as you designed it.”
Harlean saw the widened expression of surprise in Edith’s eyes even behind the thick eyeglasses and a small grin passed between the two of them.
“All right, well, put it on already. Let’s all see what that gorgeous thing is meant to look like on somebody. And call down to Publicity, will ya, Edith? Have someone send a photographer up to the set. I want him to take a picture of the two of us together and send it out to the papers. Tell ’em down there I want to see if we can help her out.”
Harlean was stunned by the stroke of good fortune. She had no idea how the circumstances had changed so completely, but she was enormously grateful that they had.
Later that afternoon, when Clara had gone back to her dressing room during a scene change, Jimmy approached Harlean. “Cup o’ joe?” he asked, offering her one of two cups of coffee he had brought from the catering table. After she took it he said, “You certainly have charmed our star. Feel like sharing your secret?”
“I have no idea, honestly. I was just being myself.”
“Well, that must be the magic. Beautiful, funny and sincere. The whole package. Clara is right, you are going to go places.”
Harlean felt herself blush and she averted her gaze. In response, he drew her chin up by his index finger. “Be proud of the effect you have on people. Say, listen, how ’bout you get all dolled up tonight after work and I’ll take you to dinner. The Cocoanut Grove sound good?”
“I’ve never been there,” she replied, trying to keep the excitement at the prospect from her voice.
It was the nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel where all the celebrities dined and danced. The problem was that she had agreed to see Roy again later that night.
She was enormously attracted to Roy, but an evening of being wined and dined at the famous nightclub was too enticing to decline.
“I’d love to join you, Jimmy.”
“Swell. I’ll bring the hooch to add to our drinks since it has gotten harder there on mid-Wilshire to get anything that’s drinkable.”
“That sounds swell,” she replied, feeling excited about the evening ahead already.
“Pick you up at seven thirty?”
* * *
Harlean was so looking forward to finally being at the Cocoanut Grove that, as she dashed into the house to change and grabbed her stack of mail her mother left near the door, she almost didn’t open the letter she saw was from Chuck’s attorney.
Once she did, she paused for a moment, set down her handbag and picked up Oscar. Her heart started to race. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know what was inside. The lawyers were involved now. From some things, there was no turning back. How well she had learned that already.
She trembled as she read that he was moving out and giving her the house on Linden Drive. Chuck was moving forward with the divorce. She closed her eyes, trying not to remember his face as he presented it to her that first day.
It was a good thing that she couldn’t see it now. He had done too much to chase that image away.
* * *
Harlean wore the same slinky white silk dress she had worn with her mother and Marino the night she met Roy. She was even more confident in it now, though; she could feel it with each step.
“So tell me about yourself,” she bid Jimmy as they settled in at a table for two in the center of the busy ballroom.
He smiled in response. “I don’t believe anyone has ever asked me that before.”
“Well, I guess there’s a first for everything.”
“I’m from Texas. Dallas, to be exact. Been at this game and gettin’ work from it for about six years now.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Don’t let me kid you. If they’d been big hits, you’d know all about me.”
Harlean laughed. “Actually, you were in the first talkie I saw. The Canary Murder Case.”
“First one I was ever in. This will be my second. I’ve actually been working on a silent film, too, since last year, but it seems like decades. Thing just doesn’t seem to want to fly, which was why I had to take this job. Big war epic Mr. Hughes is calling Hell’s Angels. Now, in the middle of everything, he has decided he wants to make it a talkie, too, so we’re having to shoot everything over again.”
“Howard Hughes, the millionaire aviator?”
“Yep, that’s the one. He owns Caddo Productions and, if you don’t mind my saying, he’s damned eccentric for such a young fella. I don’t think he’s even twenty-five yet. Everything’s gotta be just so with him all the time.”
Harlean felt a giggle bubble up. She was having such an unexpectedly nice time already.
“I tell ya, it’s been one crisis after another with that picture. He also decided to dabble in multicolor when he turned it into a talkie, and that just set us back even further. I have serious doubts it’s ever gonna get made at all.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said as he drew a silver flask from a pocket in his dinner jacket for a second time and splashed another liberal dose of gin into her water glass.
“And on top of that, Hughes hired this Swedish dame to play the lead when it was a silent film. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a real looker, but we’re all supposed to be from England and her accent is so thick none of us can even understand her, much less believe she’s from ol’ London town.”
They both dissolved into a fit of laughter at the prospect of such an absurd circumstance. The warming effects of the alcohol took over from there and mixed with the upbeat tune that the orchestra was playing.
In that moment, once again in her life Harlean felt like a part of two worlds: this one in which she was young, happy and free to explore the woman she felt on the verge of becoming; yet in the other she was an old soul where obligation and duty heavily bound her. Chuck was still there in that mix. Even after her dalliance with Roy, Harlean remained unsure if she was meant to fully let Chuck go from her life. Divorce was such a final thing when she had loved him as she had.
She was brought back from her thoughts when Jimmy smiled and raised his hand, beckoning someone across the room over to their table. “I didn’t know Ben would be here tonight! He’s suffering through that picture with me. We’re playing the two leads. You’ve gotta meet him. Do you mind?”
Jimmy stood as the handsome man, with a beautiful dark-haired girl on his arm, approached. The two shook hands heartily before Hall kissed his friend’s companion on the cheek.
“Guys, this is Jean, we’re working on a picture together. Jean, Ben Lyon and his very lovely girlfriend, Bebe Daniels.”
Harlean resisted the urge to say she had seen all of Bebe’s movies or to gush at the sweet-faced starlet. She had done quite enough of that fawning over Clara Bow earlier in the day.
“May we join you?” Ben asked, even as he summoned two extra chairs from a waiter and then held one out for his girlfriend.
He seemed affable, with lovely hazel eyes and such a winning smile, and it was clear that the three of them were good friends.
“I was just telling Jean all about the Hell’s Angels disaster we’re both tangled up in.”
Ben laughed at that. “Probably never to be free of it, at the rate Hughes is going. Did you tell her about Greta?”
All three of them started to chuckle since it was clearly a subject they had discussed before.
“The movie is a war epic that seems to be turning into farcical comedy,” Bebe explained, and she did so in such a believable Swedish accent that Harlean started to laugh with them.
Later, as Jimmy drove her home, he put a casual hand on Harlean’s knee. He let it linger there for a moment at a stop sign before he took it off to shift the gears. Along Beverly Boulevard, he pulled over to the curb and kissed her. The Gershwin tune, “Fascinating Rhythm” was playing softly on the car radio he’d just had installed.
“What do you say we take a drive out to the beach in Santa Monica? Look at the waves, maybe make some waves of our own?” he asked.
Harlean smiled before he kissed her again. He was attractive, and she liked him. But even after this evening, and the fun she’d had with him, and his friends, she still didn’t feel what she had felt with Roy, and certainly not the consuming passion she once had felt with Chuck. Letting this go any further with a fellow actor would be a mistake.
“Can I take a rain check
? It’s been a long day and we both have an early call at the studio again tomorrow.”
The grip he had on her thigh steadily eased.
“Sure thing, doll face. Sweetest brush off I’ve ever gotten.”
She reached up to touch his cheek. “It’s not that, Jimmy. Honest. You’re swell, really you are. I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now with the separation from my husband, and trying to support my mother and her husband, and with not a lot of work coming in to do it.”
“Your husband isn’t helping you while you guys figure things out?”
“He and my mother don’t get along. He doesn’t want his money going to her.”
“Grandparents, aunts, uncles, anybody who can help tide you over?”
Harlean sighed and stared straight ahead for a moment into the lamp-lit night of the busy boulevard. “My grandpa Harlow got angry over a little short I did with Laurel and Hardy. He told me that if I was strong enough to make it in Hollywood, I need to do it without his money since he doesn’t approve of the pictures I’ve been in.”
“He thinks you’re that resourceful?”
“No, he thinks I’m gonna quit. He’s just trying to make me come to my senses sooner than later, but I’m damn sure gonna try to prove to him that I’m stronger than he thinks.”
He exhaled, sank back in his seat, then shook his head. “Tough break. Say, I could loan you some suds until you get back on your feet? No strings.”
“There would be strings, Jimmy,” she said as she wiped her lipstick from his mouth with her thumb.
“I like you a lot, Jean.”
“I like you, too, Jimmy. So, I’d rather have your friendship than your money.”
“Don’t think I won’t try things again with us,” he warned.
“I’d be offended if you didn’t,” she said as she flashed him her best version of a breezy smile she didn’t fully feel. But then again, she thought, that was acting.
* * *
Her mother and Marino were asleep by the time Jimmy dropped her off in front of the house. Harlean waved goodbye and then, after he drove off, she got into her own car and let out a deep sigh. She was feeling nostalgic tonight, missing parts of the life she had shared with Chuck more than ever, especially after spending the evening with a man she did not know well, or love. She missed so many things that were part of the comfort of married life: the ease of being with one particular human being, the private jokes, intimacy, a growing history, even difficult times that knit them together as they faced them.
