The Southern Comfort had ignited a comforting warmth behind Marylin’s breastbone. “Long johns?” She giggled.
“Red long johns. With flaps in back.” He gestured with a raise of his hand that she drink again. This time she sipped. “Marylin,” he said, “this is your picture, you are Rain, and we both know it. Hendrickson can go screw himself—I hear tell that is his true preference anyway. So think of him jerking off in his red long johns.”
At the lewd mental picture, she blushed and giggled again.
“Better?”
“Tight,” she said.
“Nothing wrong with being a little snookered on the set—not too much, but just enough to unwind.” He put his arm around her, drawing her down the trailer steps. She sat on a stool, letting the Southern Comfort’s warmth spread through her as the makeup man did repairs. Drawing a breath deep into her abdomen, she moved onto the brilliantly lit circle.
A half-hundred highly skilled professionals stared at her. Bentley Hendrickson sighed and leaned back.
Panic leaped onto Marylin like a tiger.
Then she saw Linc’s father, a massive figure of strength, winking at her as he tapped his thigh.
They’re all wearing long johns, she thought. Itchy red ones. Her body relaxed. She murmured, “Ready.”
A special-effects man started the telephone ringing. She reached for the instrument, thinking, thinking of the primal desolation of those minutes when Linc had informed her of the Enterprise’s sailing. Tears came into her eyes. She let them ooze down her cheeks.
She couldn’t tell if she was projecting as much acting skill as a papier-mâché doll, but for the first time since she had started Island, she understood what she was doing.
“Cut. Print it,” Bentley Hendrickson said in a soft, drawly voice. He rose from his canvas chair, coming over to hand her a box of Kleenex. “I seldom use a first take, but that was perfect, Miss Fairburn. Perfect.”
Joshua, lowering his Hollywood Reporter, winked again. Marylin flashed him a look of gratitude.
After that she was able to go onto the set every day and draw on her too-poignant memories. Joshua often came over from the Writers Building. She was too strung out to go to the commissary for lunch, so he would order the thick sandwiches for which Paramount was famous, sharing them with her in the trailer.
One evening when they were viewing the rushes, he said quietly, “You’re beautiful—but then, so are a lot of girls. You have that extra magnetism—God alone knows what it is, and no mortal’s put a name to it. When you’re in the frame, you draw the eye. That, little Marylin, is what makes a star.”
She stared up at the screen, unable for the life of her to comprehend what Joshua meant. All she saw was her own enormous image making crucial blunders in every movement.
* * *
At the end of shooting, Joshua sat next to her in the studio projection room while the Paramount executives watched a screening of the rough cut of Island. Marylin had not realized until now how much of herself the camera had captured. She saw a young girl dancing with her lover under flickering lights, saw her wild flight through empty streets to be with him one more time, saw her brave face shatter into grief as he went toward his ship. Around her she heard muted sobbing and the loud blowing of a nose.
“The End” appeared on the screen.
There was a moment of hideous silence; then applause burst out.
“A shoo-in for Best Picture of the Year!”
“We’ve got a smasheroo!”
“And what about Magnum? They’ve got some winner in that girl!”
“A sensational find, that little peach, luminous as Ingrid, more gorgeous than Lana. Magnum’ll clean up with her. She’ll put Garrison’s half-ass outfit on the map.”
Bentley Hendrickson leaned over from the row behind to take her hand and kiss it. “You blazed like a comet up there.” By now there had formed a thin sheen of professional friendship between them, yet even so she did not know how to respond to his softly respectful tones.
After a few minutes she whispered to Joshua, “Can we leave?”
“Why not?”
“You’re the writer, you work here at Paramount with these people.”
“So what?” he said. “Come on.”
It was a cool, damp September night and the few lights on the studio street shone through the mist with rainbow halos.
A couple were walking by: “That little Fairburn girl can act rings around Vivien Leigh. . . .”
That little Fairburn girl. Me, Marylin thought. They’re talking about me in the same breath with Vivien Leigh and other stars. Elation warmed her briefly; then she discounted the remark as she had discounted the praise in the projection room. This was Marylin’s first time to catch the brass ring, but tonight, as for the rest of her life, her humility about her craft made any compliment, however sincerely made, sound false in her ears.
“Hear that?” Joshua asked.
“People feel obligated to say something nice at studio screenings.”
“We’ll have to do something about that ego,” he chuckled, taking her arm. “You know what else they’re talking about?”
“Linc’s book. Your wonderful script.”
“They’re talking about Joshua Fernauld making a horse’s ass of himself mooning around the set with a girl nearly thirty years younger than he is.”
She eased from his grasp. Despite her staggering guilelessness, her youth, her inexperience with any man but Linc, she had sensed with a remote part of her mind that Linc’s father had fallen for her. Now shame crept through her. Indefensible, disgraceful, that she had not attempted to avert his desire for her. She could not conceive of his emotions as being anything more than the hots. Everyone in the Industry knew of Joshua Fernauld’s libidinous forays on young actresses. (Linc had been bitter on his mother’s behalf and BJ, her friend, sometimes made vaguely embarrassed boasts about “Daddy’s little romances.”)
“Well?” Joshua drew her into the shadowy doorway of the Accounting Building.
Well? she thought. Briefly her mind filled with a not-quite-recapturable remembrance, the tremulous moment when Linc had kissed her outside apartment 2B, the scent of the wiry lemon tree. . . . Her lips parted softly.
“He’s dead,” Joshua said, his voice a harsh lament. “There is no commingling between the quick and the dead. The movie should have been catharsis enough. You should be over him by now.”
“Are you?” she whispered.
His arms went around her, a tactile force pressing her against his tall, thick, warm body. Resting his cheek on her hair, he touched her neck lightly, tenderly. “Marylin, I loved my son, I still love him—would that I had died for him. But he’s dead.” The words rumbled within his chest, reverberating against her body. “I’ve wanted you since I brought back his stories and you were so broken and lovely in that rag of a bathrobe.”
She felt not the least desire for Joshua—indeed, with him “it” seemed incestuous, ugly, wrong—yet she had clung to him during the filming. I owe him something, she thought. Another, lesser thought flashed: at least I don’t have to explain about Linc and me.
When Joshua bent his mouth on hers, she kissed him back.
He drove her along Sunset to a nearby motel with a blinking green sign: The Lanai.
When he took her in his arms, she realized he was trembling all over. He kissed her with reverential tenderness, the kiss turning unequivocally lustful. He toppled with her onto the firm double bed, undressing her, exploring her innermost recess until she was physically ready.
He made love with an experience that lasted until she murmured that she had come enough—which was true, orgasm had followed orgasm, yet they were physical quivers, not the haunting, lingering seizures that now existed only in her dreams.
Moving swiftly, Joshua gave a cry that garbled her name, then collapsed.
Over his shoulder in the lusterless mirror Marylin could see an indistinct reflection: the back of a large, thicks
et, gasping man, his buttocks startlingly white in the middle of his tan, curled on top of a slight girl.
The image was no more real to her than the flickers on the screen earlier tonight.
* * *
Numerous retakes were needed on Island. Marylin reported daily to the Paramount sound stage, where the excessive tension that had possessed actors and crew was dissipated, replaced by an easy, jocular camaraderie as they wrapped up a film everyone knew would be good. Joshua took her out to leisurely lunches. Unaware that these were the final days she would be able to appear unselfconscious in public, she enjoyed his bravura conversation. Joshua had an inexhaustible supply of industry anecdotes that he related with outrageous accents and masterful humor that cracked her up completely—once she lay down in the booth, actually lay down, in a helpless ravagement of laughter. His range of knowledge extended far beyond Hollywood. He read vastly and catholically, and he peppered his talk with literary references. He had a firm historical command of politics, the causes and implications of the war. He understood and explained the works of Einstein and Freud. Never a bore, he let her have her say. When she spoke, timidly, about the craft of acting, his tanned, deeply lined face was heavy with concentration.
She looked up to him as she would a brilliant professor. This nonerotic suggestion of being his student extended into the Lanai Motel. Never once did she feel as she had with Linc, an equal partner.
* * *
“I reckon you ought to start going out,” NolaBee said. Since quitting Hughes, she was constantly fussing around the kitchen concocting dishes to tempt the fugitive appetite of her beautiful child. At this moment she was stirring a great dollop of butter—bought with the last of the Waces’ red ration stamps—into mashed potatoes.
“I have lunch with Joshua.”
“That’s not what all I mean, and you know it. He’s Linc’s father.”
“Verdon Conant.” Marylin mentioned a young actor that Magnum publicity often teamed her with.
“He’s one of those,” NolaBee said, letting her hand dangle from her wrist. She was peering worriedly at Marylin. “Been over a year, darlin’. I won’t have you moping around. You’re going to be a star. Now it’s time for you to have fun with beaux, maybe meet Mr. Right.”
Book Three
1944
What famous screenwriter was seen těte-à-těte at the Hollywood Brown Derby with luscious oh-so-young Island star Rain Fairburn?
—Louella Parsons’ column, Hearst Press, November 3, 1944
D-DAY
—New York Times Extra, June 6, 1944
Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, thy heroic servants, into thy kingdom.
—Broadcast prayer of President Roosevelt, June 6, 1944
Of all the thunderous hits in the successful annals of Magnum Pictures, we’re proudest of Northern Lights with that wonderful new Magnum luminary, Rain Fairburn. When you play this great new box-office attraction, you will experience not only the biggest hit of the year, but you will enjoy an equally important success, the heartfelt gratitude of your patrons.
—Ad in Motion Picture Herald, April 9, 1945
The 1944 Pulitzer Prize for fiction goes posthumously to Lincoln Fernauld for his wartime novel, Island.
—Time, May 7, 1945
Ingrid Bergman (Gaslight); Claudette Colbert (Since You Went Away); Bette Davis (Mr. Skeffington); Rain Fairburn (Island); Greer Garson (Mrs. Parkington); Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity)
—Nominees for Best Actress, 1944, Motion Picture Academy
19
1944 was Roy and Althea’s sixteenth year: on their birthdays they would be eligible for State of California drivers’ licenses. In spring, though, because Belvedere was classified as a farm, Althea achieved an early license and ownership of a car.
It was not, of course, a new model—no new cars had rolled off the line since the war began—and neither was it the convertible for which Althea had pleaded and raged. It was one of the cars used around Belvedere, an Oldsmobile station wagon, a utilitarian vehicle square of line and homely with its green hood and varnished wood body, not zooty at all. It possessed, however, one consummate virtue: Hydra-Matic transmission. There were no gears to strip, no clutch to burn out.
After a couple of days cruising around Belvedere’s graveled roadways with the chauffeur, both girls could drive. (This was by far the longest time Roy would ever spend at the estate.) Althea passed the driving test, and Roy, who had only a learner’s permit, could drive when her friend was in the car.
Althea, with her casual generosity, designated the station wagon as joint property, and together they stenciled “Big Two” with dark green paint on the wood of both front doors.
The previous summer Marylin had forever departed Beverly High. This June BJ had graduated. Roy adhered to Althea’s unstated wish that they remain an inviolate duo.
With their standoffishness, their knowing, secret-code badinage, and their outré makeup, they had garnered reputations as “cinches” or “hot stuff—though no Beverly High boys had dated them.
Althea and Roy gave rides to pairs of hitching servicemen. More often than not, these men asked them out. If the guys were young, reasonably c&c (couth and cute), the girls accepted. In their draped, shoulder-padded dresses, they descended with their dates on Hollywood, sitting in movie cathedrals or dancing at the Palladium.
These dates infused Roy with a tiny amount of self-esteem. Althea, though, gained no such confidence. What, she would ask Roy, did an evening with a GI or a gob signify? What triumph was there in jitterbugging to the razzmatazz beat of Gene Krupa when all around on the huge, crowded dance floor a thousand girls were likewise dancing with that most ubiquitous of commodities, an enlisted man? Privately, Roy considered Althea a little cold-blooded about it. Yet if they parked afterward—and they often did—on one of the secluded ledges along Tower Road, she would hear slithering, shifting, groaning sounds on the front seat of the station wagon.
Roy herself didn’t mind kissing, not even those saliva-exchanging French kisses, but when hot hands inevitably snaked toward her cotton brassiere or her pink rayon panties, desolation overcame her, for she understood that her date had lost his embryonic regard for her.
That summer NolaBee, once again a housewife, fixed Roy a late breakfast every morning, and Roy, joyous at securing her mother’s total attention, ate her Shredded Wheat recounting a bowdlerized version of her previous night’s date. That summer Marylin bought Roy two brand-new size-twelve dirndl dresses at Taffy’s, and Roy had no hickeys on her freckled skin. That summer saw monstrous battles along the coastlines of Europe, blood drenched the circumference of the globe, yet the sun chose to confer its benevolent warmth on Roy Wace in the prosperous, peaceful little town of Beverly Hills, California.
* * *
That summer, the girls met Dwight Hunter.
They were driving home from the beach along Wilshire, peasant blouses over their swimsuits, both a little groggy from too much sun. It was Roy’s turn to drive. At the intersection of Santa Monica a clanging red streetcar held up traffic. Near the landmark fountain with its graceful kneeling statue stood a sturdily built young man. Wearing covert slacks with a white shirt, he had a sandy crewcut, and from this angle showed a profile somewhat like Van Johnson’s.
He held out his thumb.
I’d pick him up in a snap if he were in uniform, Roy thought. (The girls had resolved a convoluted system of boy-girl mores; in the Big Two’s books, if you gave a ride to a serviceman you were patriotic, to a civilian, just cheap.)
He turned, glancing into the open window directly at her. As they regarded one another across Wilshire Boulevard, Roy felt a strange quiver in her abdomen.
He gestured with his head at Santa Monica Boulevard in the direction of t
he ornate dome of the Beverly Hills City Hall, whose tiles—green, blue, gold—were brilliant in the late pink sunlight. Roy was continuing along Wilshire to her house. Yet with only a fractional hesitation she nodded. He jogged across the street.
Althea turned to her. “Why are we picking that up?”
“He’s sort of Van Johnsonish.”
“Yes, they’re both masculine,” Althea retorted. “Besides, dear heart, he’s heading along Santa Monica. Which we are not.”
“So we’ll zigzag a few blocks,” said Roy, leaning over to pull at the back-door handle, releasing the lock.
“Thanks, I was giving up hope,” the man said. “Big Two. . . . I don’t get it.”
“A sobriquet,” Roy said. “Which as you doubtless know means—”
“A nickname,” he finished. “Yours?”
“Bright boy,” Roy said.
He and Roy chuckled. Althea was silent. The streetcar had passed. As the traffic moved, Roy cut a sharp left onto Santa Monica. “How far are you going?” she asked.
“Crescent.”
Roy twisted around, taking her eyes off the traffic to gaze exultantly into his eyes. “Coincidence of coincidences!” she cried. “I live on Crescent too. The house next to Ralphs.”
“I’m on the six-hundred block, north,” he said.
“The right side of the tracks,” Roy said. “Do you go to Beverly?”
“UCLA.”
“Oh?” Althea drawled with a faintly deprecatory smile. “Waiting to get caught in the draft?”
Roy, watching in the rearview mirror, saw him redden. She said hastily, “I’m Roy Wace, and this is Althea Cunningham. We’re seniors.”
“I’m Dwight Hunter. We moved here last April.”
Everything and More Page 15
