Strickling's expression hardened against the compliment, and he did that thing with his hair again before climbing back on his train of thought. “Not what you were supposed to do, Al."
"You have me there, Strick. I don't understand what you mean."
"It was afterward, after Miss Davis in her Plain Jane dress finished acting modest about winning the Best Actress Oscar. Clark came over to Mr. Thalberg's table and sought me out. He checked around to make sure we could not be overheard, then wondered if the cottage was already spoken for and, if not, might he borrow the key. He gave me a Gable wink and a smile that said he had something better in mind than to get loaded, drink away any disappointment at losing. He was already a bit tipsy, so I told him fine, provided he let you tag along. I didn't want some cop pulling him over, recognizing him, and going after a headline. Clark laughed and said something about three being a crowd, but he promised to find you and respect my wishes, so I fished the key off my key ring and handed it over."
I raised my hand like I was taking an oath. “Not what he told me, Strick. He found me and asked me to clear his path to the parking lot. There were stops along the way for hugs and handshakes from well wishers, all telling him how he should have won. Clark, gracious as ever, saying how McLaglen did a bang-up job and deserved the trophy. After the parking attendant brought around his Duesenberg, he told me thanks, go home, pack it in for the night, he'd see me tomorrow at the studio ... I swear, Strick, never once did Clark spill about getting the key to the cottage or your wanting me to be his Siamese twin."
Strickling stared at me briefly, like there might be some other truth buried in my eyes, what I'd come to expect from someone whose entire career in publicity rested on a concrete foundation of invention, misinformation, half truths, and whole-strength lies.
He nodded acceptance and said, “Not long afterward, I led the Mayers and the Thalbergs to their limousines and headed home satisfied Clark was in safe hands, your hands, until I received a call on my unlisted number from Mrs. Gable, Rhea, saying she was sorry to trouble me and wondering if I knew where her husband was."
"That's right, Clark was stag at the dinner. He's been showing up solo to events more and more lately. Curious, huh?"
Strickling leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table, locked his hands under his dimpled chin, and sounded off like a professor delivering a lecture, saying, “It's better to be photographed by the papers and fan magazines with his peers than with a wife eighteen years his senior, old enough to be his mother, with every crow's foot and wrinkle on constant display."
"Doesn't love trump looks or age?"
"Love conquers all, but not if you're a picture star. Certainly not if you're a picture star named Clark Gable. Clark understands this. So does Rhea, if you want to believe her when she claims it. In any event, I told her what she likely was hoping to hear, no matter what she was suspecting, soothing words about having left Clark celebrating their shared defeat with Laughton and Tone, and that you were there to guarantee he got home safely. That seemed to satisfy her for the time being, especially hearing your name."
"We've hit it off the few times I've seen her."
"I then phoned the Garden of Allah and had Dusty put me through to the cottage, to warn Clark about Rhea. There was no answer. I asked Dusty if she'd seen him. She hadn't. I called you, dressed, and drove over, fearing Clark may have taken his loss tonight harder than he'd let on. Fearing what I might find here. Damn actors and their egos. Momentarily relieved when I found nothing at all."
"And now?"
Strickling rose to leave.
He said, “Now, go find him, Al. Find Clark and make this problem go away."
* * * *
I checked my Omega.
Not quite seven.
Life was stirring outside the cottage. The morning twitter of the birds blended with shuffling footsteps and the roll of housekeeping and catering carts on the concrete walkway, swimmers splashing laps across the pool, and the drone of Sunset Boulevard traffic.
Clark had told me his call on the Parnell set was for six, so maybe he was there and Strickling's panic was for nothing.
Clark wasn't.
I had the studio operator put me through to the picture's director, Johnny Stahl, who couldn't hide his irritation with his star.
"Al, baby, it's that damn Gable demonstrating his distaste for a role he didn't want, forcing me to shoot around him, some pickup shots with Myrna Loy. Bob Taylor would've been better in the role than that big lug and his ego as oversized as his ears. I'd gladly settle right now for starting all over again with that hambone John Barrymore in the title role. Or Lionel Barrymore. Or Ethel Barrymore."
I hung up thinking, so unlike Clark, who earned his two thou a week by practicing the advice he'd gotten earlier in his career from Spencer Tracy: “Always be on time, know your lines, and don't bump into the furniture."
I discarded the notion to call Rhea Gable as quickly as it came to mind.
If Clark was home, he'd have delivered his own alibi.
If he wasn't, I'd have to do a Fred Astaire explaining why I was no longer looking after him, playing with the slick line of gab Strickling had handed her. They say in court truth is the best defense. Whoever “they” are, for sure they've never met Rhea Gable when she's gone off like a Roman candle over some perceived harm to Clark or his career.
I was alternating visions of Mrs. Gable heading after a divorce if she were to learn the truth and Strickling heading me to the unemployment line, when I heard what sounded like someone trying to force open the kitchen door. The door fronted on Havenhurst Drive, the tree-lined residential street a block west of Crescent Heights often used by Garden of Allah tenants and guests to park and enter the compound or a cottage without being seen.
My internal alarm system went off.
There had been a rash of robberies and burglaries in the neighborhood, including three weeks ago at Dorothy Parker's Garden cottage. She'd gone around telling everyone, “At least they couldn't steal my career from me,” to which Robert Benchley had observed, “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer beat them to it, Dottie."
I grabbed a bronze Brancusi sculpture from the end table by the sofa, a sleeping head the size of a small grapefruit and heavy enough to crack a skull, and took cautious steps toward the kitchen. My heart was imitating a Krupa drum solo as I did a quick turn through the kitchen arch, ready to strike with the sculpture.
Gable was in the doorway in disheveled, messy-haired majesty, one hand braced against the jam, his sculpted double-breasted tuxedo a mass of wrinkles, ruffled silk shirt open at the collar, bow tie hanging loose, the patented Gable cheek-popping grin offset by glassy, bloodshot eyes he struggled to keep open, his square jaw sporting an early trace of five o'clock shadow.
"I surrender,” Gable said, escalating an eyebrow. “What in the name of sweet Jesus and all the saints are you doing here, Al? Shouldn't you be home?"
"Shouldn't you?” I said, my voice rising, too relieved not to be angry.
Without waiting for Clark to answer, I settled the Brancusi on the kitchen counter, wheeled around, and headed back to the sitting room and the telephone.
"Where you going?” he said, tracking after me.
"To call Strick and let him know you showed up here in one piece, or should you call Rhea first?"
"Don't, Al.” Clark picked up the pace. I hardly had the phone receiver in hand when he snatched it from me, moved it behind his back, and shoved me onto the sofa, like he was Killer Mears in The Last Mile, the stage role that got him a contract at MGM, or one of the criminal underworld types he was typecast as in his earliest pictures.
I don't let anybody push me around.
Clark at thirty-five was four years older than me, but otherwise we were about the same height and weight. He had an inch on me, maybe a few pounds. We both worked out regularly at the studio gym, so I had no qualms about whipping his tight behind, which was about to happen if he tried anything as I lifted myself
onto my feet, fists cocked for action.
In those few moments his entire demeanor changed. His expression alternated between pain and panic. His grey eyes turned lifeless and tears streamed down his face. “Al, hear me out first, then do what you want,” he said, pleading with too much sincerity for him to be playacting.
"My job's on the line here, Clark."
"My life's on the line, Al."
"I'm listening,” I said, and sat back down.
* * * *
Clark hung up the phone, jammed his hands in his pockets, and started wandering the room like a lost legionnaire, pausing to adjust the gilded frame of a small Degas oil painting dominating the wall by the bedroom door. “How much do you know about Loretta Young and me?” he asked over his shoulder.
When I hesitated answering, he said, “Come on, kiddo, we both know Strick trusts you enough to tell you ... things.” He stepped back to check the frame and, dissatisfied with the new angle, moved it a half inch to the left, then another half inch.
"You and Miss Young got ... close when you were making Call of the Wild, is that what you mean?"
"How close?” Clark said, easing the frame a quarter inch back to the right. Satisfied this time, he resumed patrolling the room.
The story was nothing I had to hear from Strickling, and I told that to Clark.
It was widespread industry gossip, begun while Bill Wellman had his cast and crew on location in Bellingham, Washington. Winter storms erupting unexpectedly, not enough heat in living quarters meant for summertime weather. Gable and Young generating heat of their own, the way it often happened when movie stars perfected their on-screen chemistry off the screen. Although never seen together in public, continuing their personal call of the wild after the company returned to the Culver City lot.
Strickling, of course, had worked his magic. He kept the rumors from reaching the public and they eventually flamed out.
"And what else you hear from Strick?” Clark asked after I finished telling him this.
"That's it, that's all. If there's more to your romance than that, you know how closemouthed Strick can be."
"Bless him, yeah,” Clark said. He managed a sad smile. “More to it, you said? Al, you hardly know the half of it. The half that could have destroyed my career and my life, hers too.” His hollow gaze settled across the room, where the wall met the ceiling. “Last year, the sixth of November, 1935, the date mean anything to you?"
I thought about it. “No."
"Everything to me, Al. It's when Judy was born, the baby girl Louella Parsons reported Loretta had adopted."
"Didn't Louella lead off a column with the adoption news, Sheilah Graham a day later?"
"But nobody got the date of birth, only about the adoption. Loretta and her mother, Gladys, knew the date; so did Strick and Harry Brand over at Fox. And I knew the date, because—should I tell you why? I'll tell you why. Because baby Judy wasn't adopted, Al. Loretta was baby Judy's natural mother, and I was baby Judy's natural father."
"Jesus!"
"We made the baby while making Call of the Wild," Clark said. “Gladys spirited Loretta to Europe before she began showing and Strick and Harry got a story worked out, how it happened that Loretta came back sick and doctors had ordered to bed rest, keeping her at home and out of sight until baby Judy was born four months ago and Strick and Harry could go to town with their cock and bull story."
"And you bought into it."
"And Loretta, I mean, think about it, what choice did we have? Scandal has ruined more than one career. We would have been crucified if word got out, Loretta and me. The morality clause in my contract, hers at Fox, we'd be out the door faster'n the damn Legion of Decency could get screaming for our scalps, especially the two of us being Catholics."
He pulled a pack of Luckys from inside his tuxedo jacket, shook one up and used his lips to draw the ciggy out, and lit it with his sterling silver Tiffany lighter. A trail of smoke sailed across the room.
I had no idea what his surprise revelation had to do with him having gone missing, but I held back asking, hoping Clark would get there on his own. He did after three or four minutes of silence, during which he finished off the Lucky, mashed it in the ashtray on the coffee table, and lit a new one. All I could do to keep from coughing my lungs out because of the tobacco clouds, certain to stain Clark's teeth a darker shade of yellow than they already were.
"We made plans,” he said. “Loretta was supposed to meet me here last night after the Oscars, bringing pictures of the baby for me to see. Four months and I still hadn't seen my daughter, had no idea even what she looked like, and it was eating away at my guts, Al. I parked the Duesenberg out behind and waited for her to show up. Waited and waited and finally quit. I drove over to her place and rang the damn doorbell. Gladys told me through the peephole that I had my nerve. Loretta couldn't see me and don't show up like this ever again, or she'd call the police. For Loretta's sake, I didn't tell her what I thought, her being my child's grandma. I stewed out front in my car and fell asleep until daylight snapped me awake, when I headed back here."
"Why not straight home, Clark?"
"And tell Rhea what when she asks where I was all night?"
"That's still in the cards."
"Yeah, but here I could get a call in to Strick, get him to tell me what to say."
"Rhea woke him up during the night, worrying about you, and he told her how you, Tone, and Laughton were out on a bender, consoling one another over losing the Oscar, me along to keep the three of you safe, if not necessarily sober."
"See, I never would have thought of that, kiddo. Man's a genuine Grade-A genius. Where's that phone? I'll call Rhea now."
"No,” I said. I quick-stepped over and latched onto Clark's forearm before he could lift the receiver. “Better I should make the call, lay the groundwork. Back up Strick's story and explain I stopped here with you to make sure you were drowning in coffee and in shape for the drive home before sending you on your merry way."
His face exploded a smile, and he yanked me into a bear hug, planted an oversized kiss on my cheek. “That's for Strick; let him know,” Clark said, then he ambushed me with his lips on mine. “And that one was for you, Al,” he said, pulling back. He broke into laughter, that familiar Clark Gable laugh which he used to cover a multitude of sins, and headed to the bathroom to make himself presentable, wondering aloud: “Anybody ever tell you you're a better kisser than Crawford?"
* * * *
I walked Clark out to the Duesenberg and ran over the story with him one last time before he climbed behind the wheel. His line reading was perfect, punctuating every key point with some of the best acting I'd ever seen out of him, on-screen or off. He gave me a thumbs-up, gunned the motor, and tore up Havenhurst toward Sunset.
I watched him inch through traffic into a cautious left turn and out of sight, hurried up the walkway to the cottage, anxious to phone Rhea and afterward share the good news with Strickling.
The door was wide open.
A surprise was waiting for me in the kitchen.
He was a distinguished-looking gent, a politician's suntanned face under a mane of snow white hair, wire-rimmed eyeglasses enlarging hazel eyes, the left one drifting slightly off center. He wore a bottle-green blazer over white linen slacks, highly-glossed cordovan wingtips, like he could have been a costumed day player in some high society picture set in Palm Beach or at a racetrack.
Except, the revolver he was aiming at me suggested otherwise.
"You need to be more careful about locking your door when you go out,” he said, sounding like Mickey Mouse. “You never know who might drop in unannounced."
I thought he was kidding, I mean, that voice—come on.
I said, “I'm guessing you're part of some new nutty gag cooked up by Benchley. You had me going there for a minute."
His brow furrowed and he gave me a Popeye the Sailor squint. “Benchley, whoever the hell? No. I'm the guy who's going to plug you if you don't come
up with enough jack to send me away happy and you with your ticker still in working condition."
So much for guessing.
"By jack you mean money?"
"Yeah. Scratch. Dough. Cale. Mazuma. Meantime, I got a question for you. Was that Clark Gable I seen you gabbing with just now a few minutes before?” I nodded. “He's something, that Gable. You see him in It Happened One Night? I ain't worn an undershirt since. He won an Oscar for that movie, you know, like he should have won just last night for the Mutiny movie. I'd-a told him so myself, asked him for an autograph, if I wasn't on the prowl here."
"Maybe we can work something out, and I could get you Clark's autograph? On a still, maybe a nifty gallery portrait by Hurrell?"
"Who?"
"Georgie Hurrell, Metro's studio gallery photographer. He shoots all the stars, not only Clark. Even Garbo."
"Whoever. Me, I only shoot people who don't come through for me, and right now it's your scratch I'm after.” He thumbed back the hammer on the revolver. “Lead the way, brother. And I'm sure hoping for your sake you got enough scratch to satisfy my itch. You wouldn't be the first to come up short and wind up pushing up daisies."
Security for Metro is pretty much facing down unruly fans at a Grauman's premiere trying to bust out of the bleachers to get an autograph or cop a feel from a Gable or Shearer or some up-and-comer like Mitzi Miles or Virginia Grey.
Harmless stuff like that.
It had been a while since I was obliged to face down a bad egg or a weapon in my old line of work, but self-defense is like roller skating or riding a bicycle, once learned it's a skill you don't lose.
Passing the kitchen counter, in a single motion I got a grip on the Brancusi bronze, rolled around, whacked the guy on the side of the head. Heard a noise like a sledgehammer cracking a coconut.
AHMM, November 2009 Page 12
