by Anne Girard
“It’s Mr. Bern from MGM,” Jean said in an eager whisper as she handed her the receiver.
He seemed powerful enough based on his corner office with a view alone but it was surprising that he had already found her a role. “Hello?”
“Jean, Paul here. I’ve asked your mother’s permission to take you out this Friday night.”
Her heart sank a little. She hadn’t expected that. “I see.”
“She informs me that you are married, but that it’s just a matter of time before that is no longer the case.”
Harlean glanced up as Jean Bello began to flit happily around the living room where the phone was connected.
“Did she?”
Mother had no right to say that because Harlean hadn’t fully made any sort of peace with it. When she did, that much needed to be up to her, she believed.
“Anyway, as it happens, I have two tickets to a poetry reading at a little bookstore over on Sunset. I’d be honored if you would join me.”
She certainly hadn’t expected him to propose a date, or that somehow he could make it sound innocent and quite proper. In spite of how homely she found him, the prospect of that sort of evening was enticing, especially since it involved something she loved.
“All right, sure. It sounds like fun,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t regret it.
* * *
They laughed and laughed. There was a great deal that surprised Harlean about Paul, not the least of which was his sense of humor. What surprised her most however was that, throughout the evening, he behaved like a complete gentleman. The respect he showed made her feel special in a way she never had before.
Chuck had loved her, but Paul seemed to respect her.
After the poetry reading, he took her to Schwab’s Pharmacy for an ice-cream soda, instead of out for cocktails. The gesture charmed her all the more.
“I was looking through scripts for you all day today,” he said as they sat atop two chrome and red leather stools as if they were teenagers, both of them sipping their sodas.
“I doubt Mr. Hughes would ever actually loan me out to work on anything really good. He’s already turned down so many offers.”
“You leave that to me,” he replied. “His publicity machine is working hard to make you a star even before his movie premiere. If he can’t find a follow-up for you himself, he will have to let someone else try eventually since you’re already a valuable commodity to him.”
Harlean laughed. “He only offered me my usual $150 a week, if you had hired me for your picture.”
“He was going to charge MGM $1,500 a week if we hired you.”
She was stunned. “And keep the rest for himself?”
“Of course.”
“That rat.”
“He’s a businessman, but then so am I. He might be filthy rich but I’ve been at this game a while longer than he has and, in the end, I always win.”
“I like the way you think, Paul.”
“Thalberg always says that same thing. He’s powerful, more so than Hughes actually, but he doesn’t have a stomach for the fight. I know they call Irv ‘The Boy Wonder’ around town, but he’s rather sickly for his age, which is why he made me his right-hand man. I face the slings and arrows for him.”
Everyone who worked in the film industry knew who Irving Thalberg was. Just thirty years old, he was a handsome wunderkind, the genius behind the movie hit The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He and his wife, the actress Norma Shearer, were one of Hollywood’s golden couples, along with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst.
“So tell me about your marriage,” he asked suddenly, changing the subject. “Is your mother correct, that it’s over between you?”
Paul was kind and also direct. She gave it more thought about how she wanted to respond because she liked him. It was such a complicated issue in her mind, and until now that hadn’t felt to her like anyone’s business.
“I wish I knew,” she said, and she heard the sadness in her own voice.
“It’s gone that far?”
“Like a runaway train.” She sighed.
“Do you still love him?”
“Yes. I think I always will.”
“Perhaps you should fight for it, then.”
She absently twirled her straw. “I wish it were that simple. The lawyers are handling everything now.”
“It’s as simple as you want it to be, really. Talk to him. It wouldn’t seem like either of you can move on in your lives until you do that.”
Unable to free her mind of his advice, the next morning, she drove alone out to Long Beach to see Aunt Jetty again. After a sustained embrace that brought her to tears, Harlean sank into the same overstuffed chair she had the last time. Being reminded of that day only made things heavier on her heart.
“Well, that is a fine mess,” Jetty sighed after Harlean detailed things. “Your mama didn’t exactly explain it in the same way. She made that boy sound like a tyrant.”
“He has an awful temper, Aunt Jetty, and he can be as peevish as a little boy sometimes but this honestly wasn’t all his fault. There were things I did, too, and shouldn’t have, that I regret.”
“Most things rarely are one-sided, child.”
“Mommie thinks he will hold me back. She hates him for it, she always has,” she said softly.
“Hate is a strong word. But then your mama is one strong woman when she sets her mind to something.”
“I just don’t see why I had to choose between a career and my marriage, but that’s really what they both made me do.”
“Well, now, that’s curious because when I spoke to him last, Chuck told me how proud he was of you and your career. I mean, you have to do what’s right for you, Baby, and you know I’ll support you in it, but you deserve to know the facts.”
Harlean looked up from her hands. A chill of surprise ran through her. “You’ve spoken with him?”
“About two weeks ago. Must’ve been before the lawyers got all mixed up in everything. He asked if he could come out to speak with me and I didn’t think it’d be right not to give him a hearing.”
“That was my fault, I’m the one who charged him with cruelty to get the judge on my side,” she explained, trying to press back the wave of sadness thoughts of their marriage always brought. “Mommie and Marino told me there was really no other way to stay in Hollywood, support myself and see where this career thing might take me if I didn’t do it because his estate had cut me off and Mr. Hughes is paying me peanuts.”
Jetty arched a silver brow to accent a suddenly critical stare. “Come on, child, this is ol’ Aunt Jetty you’re talking to here. Is that really what drove you to a drastic first move like that? The only reason?”
“He wasn’t fighting for me, Jetty. I don’t know. I was just so angry and hurt.”
“So you were trying to hurt him back?”
“Just get a reaction out of him, I suppose.”
“I suspect the reaction you got wasn’t the one you wanted.”
“I saw a girl in my living room with him,” she admitted.
Jetty’s tone remained steady. “She was only a friend there to help him pack up his things. There were two of them there that night, and one of them brought her boyfriend along to help with the heavy boxes. He told me all that himself, said he was grateful to have had the help because he was such an emotional wreck leaving that house.”
“The fact remains, Aunt Jetty, I have to be able to support myself until my career takes off.”
“What you mean, child, is support yourself, and the two of them. Listen, sweetie, you know how much I love your mama. She’s as dear to me as if she were my own child. But you can’t live your life for her, and she sure as hell has got to stop trying to live hers throu
gh you!”
“She just wants the best for me,” Harlean softly countered.
“Don’t kid yourself. Jean Bello wants the best for Jean Bello. That girl wanted to be an actress more than anything in the world for as long as I can recall. Sake’s alive, that’s all she talked about when you were little. She was like a dog with a bone.”
Jetty slapped her chintz-skirted knee for emphasis.
“I remember how she was, and I know what this career of mine means to her now. It’s the most important thing in the world to her.”
“Decide what you want, not what she wants. It’s your turn now.”
Another of Jetty’s white Persian cats jumped onto Harlean’s lap with that, settled in and began to purr, just like the other cat had done when she was here last.
“It seems ol’ Tuck here fancies you as much as his brother did. Unless I miss my guess, he’ll be here any minute.”
Harlean wanted a dozen pets as soon as she could have them. A full menagerie would do nicely she thought as she stroked the cat’s sleek fur, and she fully intended one day to have that. She would always be an animal lover and a champion of them.
A moment later, exactly as Jetty had predicted, Nip, slightly smaller and with wider eyes, jumped onto Harlean’s lap, competing for space with his brother, their cute names having come from the pages of a children’s story.
“Well, now, if that’s not a sight. Just like when you were a child, your mama said animals of all kinds were drawn to you,” Jetty exclaimed with pleasure. “Look at how smitten those two boys are with you. You certainly haven’t lost your touch. Say, I have an idea. You’re feeling lonely these days, and I’ve got these dreadful allergies, all that long hair, it’s a frightful battle for me. How would you feel about taking the boys for a while?”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly.” The thought of separating anything or anyone these days was the last thing Harlean wanted. Both of them continued to purr on her lap. “They’re your beautiful cats and I’m sure you’d miss them too much.”
“They’d be right up the road in Beverly Hills and, the way you are with them, I know they’d be happy.”
Harlean knew what her aunt was trying to do. No one understood the heartache of a broken marriage like someone else who had suffered through one. Jetty was trying to give her another focus for her love and attention for now, and for that she was grateful. She stroked each of them, their lovely soft fur. It would be nice to have more pets around, to grow her little animal family to keep her company.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”
“I think it’s a terrific idea. But I reserve the right to come and visit them often.” Then she leaned forward in her chair. “And think about what I said, will you, sweetie? Make a divorce your choice if you go through with it, not your mother’s choice. I know full well this isn’t easy for you, the being alone now when you’ve been loved. Nobody wanted me to have that, either. I listened to them for a while, then I got my dander up. If he hadn’t gone and died on me, I’d still be his.” Jetty let out a heavy sigh and lay her head back against the chair. “All that wasted time...”
The last four words especially lay like a stone on her heart on the long drive back to the city. Everything Jetty had said struck Harlean in such a powerful way. She had gone out there for sympathy, and she had come away disturbed by events she felt she had no control over.
But didn’t she really?
Yes, mother had instigated and encouraged this divorce but, in the end, it was her life, her decision. She knew it was time she took responsibility for that fact.
Harlean was relieved more than glad to find that Mother and Marino had gone out. She so badly needed the quiet just now to think and process everything. She was trying hard to grow up, and grow into the woman she knew she was meant to be, but life was certainly not making it easy for her. She understood more clearly at this moment than ever before what a monumental decision lay ahead for her life.
She set Nip and Tuck down and Oscar immediately came to investigate. Harlean watched them for a moment, then went to her room and sank onto the edge of her bed in complete emotional exhaustion. Just as she kicked off her shoes, the phone rang.
“Hello?” she cautiously said, almost afraid these days, with creditors hounding her and the divorce looming, to hear who might be on the other end of the line.
Chapter Twenty
“Hello, Daddy.”
While they spoke a few times a year, they corresponded by letter most often. Harlean hadn’t expected at all to hear his voice today.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, that I haven’t phoned often enough. But I do miss you so.”
She gripped the receiver more tightly, not wanting him to hear the disappointment she long had felt that their relationship wasn’t a closer one. Her mother had seen to the distance between them initially after their divorce but, as with Chuck now, the reality was that Mont Carpenter hadn’t fought hard enough through the years to keep them close.
“I know, Daddy. Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re dreadfully angry with me, aren’t you?”
“It’s not you, I promise.”
She had far too much on her mind just now to dredge up old disappointments and longings for a father. At this point in her life, she would take what he had to give because she didn’t like the idea of losing anyone else whom she held dear.
“If you’re sure... Say, how’d the picture turn out? You said in your last letter you had wrapped up filming.”
“I won’t know for a few weeks. It’s in editing now. I had some problems with the director, so I really hope they like me in it when it’s done.”
“I’m sure you will be marvelous. The world will finally see what I always have.” There was a strange tension between them since they both knew he hadn’t physically seen his daughter for such a long time. “So I wanted you to hear it from me, sweetheart. The thing is, I’m...getting married again.”
Not today, of all days when she was this blue, she thought, after the feelings her intense conversation with Aunt Jetty had dredged up.
“I’m really happy for you, Daddy, that’s great. Congratulations.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t know how good it is to hear that from my best girl. Her name is Maude. She’s such a wonderful woman and I just know you two will get along like a house on fire.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, willing an even more sincere tone into her voice because she did love him and she would always hope for a better, richer relationship between them one day. “I’m sure we will, Daddy. I look forward to it—not just writing letters with you and talking on the phone here and there.” That had never been enough to fill the void her father left in her life. “Hopefully I can get back there real soon.”
“So they’re calling you the Platinum Blonde now, I see. Maude read that in the newspaper back here the other day while she was at the beauty parlor.”
“That’s Mr. Hughes’s publicity machine at work.”
“I don’t mind telling you it’s still odd hearing my Harlean called Jean Harlow.”
“Mommie is happy about it.”
“Oh, I have no doubt,” he said, and she could hear the slight edge returned to his voice, in spite of what a mild-mannered gentleman he usually was.
“Mr. Hughes calls her Mother Jean, so now everyone has started calling her that,” Harlean explained with a small snicker. But her father did not laugh in return.
“Well, listen, I’d better go. Maude has made a reservation for us over at the country club for dinner.”
“Yes, sure, you need to go. And, Daddy...”
“Yes, sweetheart? Listen, Baby, are you okay? I know your life must be a whirlwind right now between your career and the divorce and everything.”
“I’m happy for you, I mean
that, Daddy, I really do.”
He deserved her support, and she meant to give it to him, just as she had given it when she hadn’t felt it the day Mother married Marino Bello.
Harlean had always known how deeply her mother had hurt her father by leaving. Recalling that now, she was a little ashamed of herself for not being more enthusiastic about Maude when she’d heard about her initially. She would be better on their next phone conversation, she promised herself that.
Oscar jumped onto her lap and Harlean stroked his downy-soft little head as Nip and Tuck followed suit. The little trio were such a comfort to her already, and she needed the nearness of something she cared about just now as she hung up the phone receiver and felt the utter emptiness around her.
* * *
While Hell’s Angels was still in postproduction, Howard Hughes had begun the massive task of staging the movie’s premiere. He boasted all over town that it was going to be a spectacle unlike any other, and he had the money to back up his vision.
After Christmas, 1930, Howard Hughes enlisted the help of Sid Grauman, whose Chinese theater was strategically located right in the center of Hollywood Boulevard. Hughes planned to take over the entire street for the evening in May when the movie was set to premiere.
Exciting as the prospect of such an event seemed, Harlean grew more restless in the interim. While he had done that one favor for Paul Bern, now Hughes refused to loan her out to another studio until all of the editing on the film was complete, so she consoled herself with photo shoots and visits to watch postproduction. Harlean still loved learning all she could about the business of movie making so there was some consolation in that.
Finally, she was invited by the noted art director George Holl to come in and see some of the pieces he was creating as part of the advertising campaign for the movie.
Even imagining herself depicted in movie posters was a thrill.
After she and Rosalie had finished lunch at a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard they walked toward his studio, which was right across the street from the theater. Harlean could not help but sigh with nostalgia as she glanced over at the place that signified so many of her girlhood dreams. It was still unfathomable to her that someone as renowned in the movie business as Holl was painting a poster bearing her name and likeness, one that would soon grace the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. For any girl even the idea of such a thing was a dream come true.
