Tinseltown Confidential

by Martin Turnbull

  A voice came over the PA. “Cast and crew, to your places. This is a take.”

  When Lucille Ball walked out onto the kitchen set, her red hair blazed under the studio lights. “Ready for a terrific show?”

  After the audience roared its answer, she stepped close enough for Marcus to see the sky blue of her eyes. She made a little speech about how glad she was that they could join her today and that their job was to have a good time. Marcus wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but about halfway through her spiel, Ball appeared to do a double take when she spotted someone in his section.

  She took her seat at the Ricardos’ kitchen counter and set the numerology book in front of her, then pulled a face of comic concentration. “Ready when you are, Mr. Daniels!”

  * * *

  Marcus hadn’t yet caught an episode of I Love Lucy, so he came to this filming cold. It didn’t take long to figure out that Lucy was the kook who never learned her lesson, and Ricky was her straight man forever wishing he’d married some regular girl instead of this henna-rinsed wacko he’d fallen for.

  Between takes, Marcus could see this wasn’t just a superficial duplication of how Lucille and Desi were in real life. The pair of them—but especially Lucille—were keen to land every joke for maximum response, and were open to any suggestion to improve the script.

  Regina was right: Marcus was staggered by how quickly they moved through the script. The cast and crew worked together with a singlemindedness that allowed them to burn through page after page. At MGM, it took weeks to get through half an hour of screen time, but these people got it done in hours. Then suddenly, they were finished.

  As Marcus stood to leave, he felt his attempts at copywriting push against the inside of his jacket. Maybe he could break away and find Oppenheimer’s office? The production offices were probably in the same buildings as the Lone Ranger’s. He didn’t want to bump into anyone he knew there, but this might be his only chance.

  By the time he figured this out, he was the last person left on the bleachers, and the security guard was coming his way.

  “Just leaving now!” Marcus moved toward the stairs.

  The guard blocked his path. “Come with me.” He led Marcus along the front row and down a short flight of stairs to the kitchen set, and had him take a seat where Lucy had opened the episode.

  Marcus took out his dummy promos and was surprised to hear a woman’s voice greet him. “Hello!”

  Lucille Ball was dressed in a snugly tailored, floor-length duster. She held out her hand as she approached. “You must be Marcus.”

  “I am.” He took her hand and returned her firm shake.

  She sat in the same chair she’d used in the opening scene. Close up, her eyes were almost cobalt blue, but softer, inviting. Somehow, she managed to give him the impression that she’d winked at him without actually winking. “We know someone in common.”

  “We’re bound to, considering we were at MGM at the same time.”

  “I’m talking about Kathryn Massey.”

  Marcus knew everybody Kathryn knew, and the name Lucille Ball was not on that list.

  “We only met for the first time recently when she took me to lunch at Perino’s.” She laughed. “We were at it for three hours. She’s a smart cookie, that one.”

  Marcus slipped his papers back inside his jacket. Whatever the reason he was here, it wasn’t to write ad copy. “Don’t I know it.”

  “She mentioned you a couple of times. I knew you from your HUAC appearance, and when I spotted you tonight, it got me thinking.” Ball strummed her lacquered nails on the counter in a rapid rat-a-tat-tat. “I have some work for you, if you’re available.”

  “I am.”

  “Kathryn told me that you were Mervyn LeRoy’s on-set photographer for Quo Vadis.”

  “Oh, she did, huh?”

  “Was she talking out of school?”

  Marcus uncrossed his legs and sat up straighter. “Did Kathryn ask you to give me a job? I could use one, God knows, but I don’t go for charity—”

  Ball thumped the counter. “Glad to hear it! No, Kathryn didn’t ask anything. She just mentioned you in passing, but a week later I was over at Deborah Kerr’s place and she showed me your book.”

  “My what?”

  “Coffee table book. The photos you took during the production of Quo Vadis.”

  At the end of an all-night shoot when everybody was dead on their feet, Marcus joked about turning his shots into a book so they’d have some recollection of what they’d done. Mervyn LeRoy laughed but gave no indication he would do anything like that.

  “Ah, the Quo Vadis book.”

  “It got me thinking.” She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. The softness was gone; in its place was the composed confidence of a businesswoman. “I have a hunch that this silly little show we’re doing, with its wacky housewife and her long-suffering—but more importantly, minority—husband will be groundbreaking.”

  Marcus thought that was a stretch. But maybe not. It was impressive the way they filmed with three cameras at the same time.

  “And if I’m right, I want it documented,” Ball said. “Everything. The writing room, the rehearsals, costume fittings, filming, end-of-season parties, promotional tours. You’ll get full access, right across the board. Two hundred a week while we’re in production. What do you say?”

  Marcus longed to say yes, but felt it wouldn’t be right unless he was sure that Ball was fully aware of the facts. One of these days, he could have a conversation like this and not have to bring up the past, but that day seemed a long way off. “I have what some people think of as a sketchy background.”

  Ball ran a finger through a vivid red curl. “You’re referring to those HUAC bastards?”

  “I am, but—”

  “Are you aware of my Commie past?”

  “You? I find that very hard to believe, Miss Ball.”

  “What if I were to tell you that back in 1936, I became a registered voter with the Communist Party?”

  “You’re a—member?”

  “I’m not a Commie, Mr. Adler, so let’s do away with that deer-in-the-headlights face. I come from a close family, and had a grandfather whom I adored. He asked me to do it.”

  “You became a Commie to please grandpa?”

  “It was 1936; we were still feeling the effects of the Depression. Commie wasn’t a four-letter word like it is now. I knew zilch from nada, except that I loved my grandpa and would do anything to please him. It’s not like I attended meetings or anything. I’m as Commie as Little Orphan Annie, but there are records somewhere, and one of them has my name on it.”

  “Does HUAC know any of this?” Marcus asked. “Or the FBI?”

  “I think we can assume it’ll come up sooner or later.”

  “And why are you telling me this?”

  Lucille Ball laid a hand on his arm. “Because I want you to know that this blacklisting fiasco makes my blood boil. I want to help anyone who’s been unfairly mistreated. And also because when the tables are turned on me, as I assume they will, maybe I’ll need you to help me through shark-infested waters.” She squeezed his wrist. “So what d’you say, you little Pinko stinko, you? Are you on board?”

  Marcus smiled at his new boss with the flaming red hair, the sharp blue eyes, and the secret Commie past, and thought of Mayer’s advice to acquire a new skill.

  “You bet your last bottle of henna I am.”

  Ball slapped the sides of her face in horror. “Anything but that!”

  CHAPTER 15

  Kathryn stood behind her mock counter in her mock kitchen and maintained a mock smile as her director, Dex, fussed with the display of cake mixes and cookbooks. He was having a devil of a time getting them to sit right.

  Kathryn still found it hard to grasp that her face was about to be seen in New York and Los Angeles at the very same time.

  At each of the ten stops on Kathryn’s Sunbeam Mixmaster-Betty Crocker tour, the crowds were bigger than ant
icipated. She’d thought she’d just show up at some department store and do her shtick, then head back to the hotel to work on her next column.

  But Denver and Pittsburgh had been whole different slices of lemon chiffon cake.

  Susan Hayward joined her in Denver. Even though she played the lead in the biggest hit of the year—David and Bathsheba—Kathryn wasn’t prepared for the multitudes who jammed the homewares department at Sears to see a movie star in the flesh. Nor did she expect Susan to yell, “I can’t bake for nuts!” Kathryn wasn’t sure how the cake-mix fight came across to the listeners at home, but the store audience ate it up.

  When Randolph Scott joined her at Kaufmann’s department store in Pittsburgh, the ladies damn near broke the barrier. Not that Kathryn blamed them. Scott gave “gorgeous” a whole new meaning.

  Dex adjusted Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book again. “How’s that, Mac? Still flaring the lights?”

  A voice came over the PA. “Perfect! Don’t anybody touch it.”

  “You got everything you need?” Dex asked Kathryn.

  She told him no and asked if he’d seen Leo.

  “In the control booth.” He squinted. “You’re too shiny.”

  Kathryn already felt self-conscious. Radio required nothing elaborate, so she wasn’t prepared for the suffocating layers of dark pancake makeup and setting powder the NBC makeup guy had applied earlier.

  She circled her face with an index finger. “I feel like I’m in blackface.”

  “Our cameras need masses of light, so be prepared to feel like a rotisserie chicken, too. If it’s any comfort, Adelaide is enduring the same torture in LA.”

  For the past few years, actress Adelaide Hawley had been portraying Betty Crocker in print and television ads. She’d done so well that a recent poll showed most American housewives believed Betty Crocker was a real person. The woman playing her was the second most recognizable female in the country after Eleanor Roosevelt. It was Kathryn’s idea to have “America’s First Lady of Food” on the California end of the transcontinental cable, and the executives were hyperventilating with excitement.

  The studio doors banged open and the audience stampeded in. Kathryn walked out from behind the counter. “Welcome, everybody. No need to rush. Every seat is a good one!”

  A pigtailed teenager squeaked, “You look funny.”

  “I do, don’t I?” Kathryn flung her arms out. “I feel like Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer!” Everybody giggled. “We’re here to bake cakes and make history. I’ve never done anything like this, so I need to know that you’re behind m—”

  The “me” stuck in her throat when she spotted an unsettlingly familiar face in the very last seat of the front row.

  What is Winchell doing here?

  He blinked at her with supercilious indolence.

  A makeup artist in a blue smock appeared by her side and muttered how perspiration would be the death of her. Kathryn turned her back on Winchell and let the woman powder her down.

  Over the PA came a different voice. “Five minutes and counting. I need everybody in place, please.”

  The makeup woman gave Kathryn a final swipe with the powder brush and wished her luck in a you’ll-need-it tone that Kathryn didn’t appreciate.

  “Lights!”

  The blanket of light singed Kathryn’s retinas and she let out a piercing shriek. She cringed when she heard the audience gasp. She turned away not only to hide her embarrassment, but to shield herself from the contempt on Winchell’s face.

  For the first time all morning, she thought of Marcus and wondered if he was having a better time than she was.

  * * *

  As Marcus pulled into the prison parking lot, he realized that he’d been expecting Hollywood’s version of Sing Sing: tangled barbed wire stretching interminably in both directions, dozens of armed guards with loaded rifles cocked and ready, spotlights raking the driveway, and maybe Cagney or Bogie making a run for it.

  The reality was rather mundane.

  The gravel parking lot held only a handful of cars. A fifteen-foot wooden gate painted dark green was the sole feature of a twenty-foot wall of gray stone that blocked the view of the Hudson River.

  Marcus climbed out of his rented Pontiac and walked to the gate—it was more like a barn door. When a curt voice on the intercom told him to state his business, he said that he’d come to visit an inmate, and gave Danford’s name. The intercom went silent for a full thirty seconds—a long time to be standing outside a prison whose name alone brought on the heebie-jeebies.

  It was a miracle he was here at all. Once he got the I Love Lucy job, he thought he would have to bow out of the New York trip with Kathryn. But a fight had broken out among the key players about the show’s direction and the sitcom took a hiatus. By pure dumb luck, it was the same week Kathryn was ending her tour in New York.

  But now that he was standing outside the infamous prison, Marcus didn’t feel all that lucky.

  The gate slid open just enough for Marcus to step into a small courtyard. Bare concrete floor. Iron bars on three sides. Metal clanking against metal.

  An armed guard pointed him to a sign—VISITORS—next to a door that slid open as Marcus approached. A guard whose sullen face matched the voice over the intercom patted him down, then directed him to a room the length of a football field. The smell of fresh paint filled the air, but the dreary brown walls could have been painted at any time in the last twenty years. A long wooden table the width of a Chasen’s booth ran down the middle of the room; along the center a ten-inch barrier separated the sides.

  Three couples sat along the length of the table, inmates on one side, wives on the other. A guard told Marcus to sit anywhere he chose.

  A metal door clanged open to reveal a figure wearing gray twill trousers and matching jacket, and a drab white shirt buttoned to the collar. As the prisoner approached, Marcus thought about what Kathryn had said over breakfast at the Plaza that morning.

  “I only have it on my mother’s say-so that this guy is my father, so I want you to look for signs of anything we might have in common. The same nose, maybe, or similar hand gestures. Apparently, we can inherit those through our genes, like hair color.”

  Marcus got the impression that Kathryn wouldn’t be altogether disappointed if this jailbird convicted of treason wasn’t related to her after all.

  But as prisoner 16391–1258 drew closer, any doubt that he was Kathryn’s father evaporated. Danford possessed the same determined jaw, the same intense gaze from the same dark hazel eyes, and the same dead-straight hair that no amount of home perms or professional marcelling could conquer.

  Marcus stood. “Hello, Mr. Danford.”

  He regarded Marcus tentatively. “I saw your name on the visitor roster, but I’m afraid it doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “It wouldn’t.”

  The two men took their seats on opposite sides of the broad table.

  “It’s been a long time since anybody paid me a visit,” Danford said. “We’re allotted twenty minutes, so please, let’s not waste time on social pleasantries.”

  As Danford leaned back and crossed his legs, Marcus saw a hint of the old-money society family that liked to claim it reached back to the Boston Tea Party.

  “Are you some sort of lawyer, Mr. Adler? Or reporter, perhaps?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Marcus forced a smile. He’d seen those eyebrows furrow a thousand times—when Kathryn was getting riled up over Louella’s column or an injustice Harry Cohn had perpetrated on some naïve Columbia starlet. “This is more of a social call. I’m here . . .” It was a weightier moment than Marcus had anticipated. The stifling confinement of the place closed in on him; he felt the chill of the concrete permeate to his bones.

  “Spit it out, son,” Danford told him.

  “I’m here on behalf of Kathryn Massey.”

  The man had no response.

  Oh, for crying out loud, Marcus thought. I’m going to have to tell him who she is.


  * * *

  Kathryn stared down the lens of the one-eyed monster and wondered if it was picking up the line of sweat at her hairline. She felt it trickle behind her left ear and seep down her neck inside the collar of her dress.

  “Adelaide?” she said. “Are you still with us?”

  Kathryn thought it ironic that unknown thousands of people could watch her and Adelaide Hawley bake cakes on both coasts and the only person who couldn’t see it was her.

  Do they even have television sets in Sing Sing? If this were a movie, Marcus would be pointing me out to Danford right now—Oh, sweet Jesus! I called her Adelaide!

  Dex’s final instruction was, “Do not call her Adelaide. To America, she is Betty Crocker.”

  Kathryn could hear only static. Had they lost the connection?

  Kathryn cupped her hands around her mouth. “Paging Betty Crocker! Are you still with us?”

  So far, the broadcast had gone well. The green bulb on top of the camera lit up right on cue, and Kathryn hadn’t stumbled over her welcoming words. And when she’d called for Betty Crocker to join her in Los Angeles, Adelaide’s voice came through crisp and clear.

  After Leo had outlined how Golden Aerial Day would work, Kathryn had asked whether the historic broadcast that enabled LA and New York to tune to the same program deserved better subject matter than baking some stupid cake. Leo had pointed out that without the lemon chiffon cake, the Betty Crocker people wouldn’t be interested in sponsoring the event, and Kathryn’s national tour would be off.

  Kathryn held her smile through several ponderous seconds of dead air and waited for Adelaide to respond.

  “I’m here, Kathryn!” she exclaimed. “I accidentally hit my microphone with a spatula.”

  “Did it hit you back?”

  The studio audience laughed. So did Adelaide after a delay. “I don’t know how big your microphone is, but I wouldn’t want to stumble across mine in a dark alley.”

  Her remark made Kathryn think of Winchell. She hadn’t seen him in a year, not since the night of the All About Eve premiere at Grauman’s. Whatever he was here for, it was for more than just a baking demonstration.