by Tapper, Jake
“Well, there go our ‘High Hopes,’” Margaret said, trying to get a smile out of him.
“Well, let’s ‘Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,’” Charlie responded, smiling. “At least we’re here.”
Surrounded by the film crew busily preparing for the next day’s shoot, Charlie and Margaret weren’t quite sure where to stand or what to do. They spotted Frankenheimer deep in discussion with the set designer and several workers next to the faux train car, which looked as though it had been cut in half lengthwise. This was where Sinatra’s Marco would have trouble lighting his cigarette and meet his love interest, played by Janet Leigh. Images of a landscape were projected onto a giant screen outside the train window so it looked as if the train were moving.
“How much footage?” Frankenheimer asked the set designer.
“Twenty minutes,” he said, “about.”
Frankenheimer ran a hand through his mussed hair. “That’s it?” He sighed. “Just make sure we don’t have them speed by the same water tower five times. This isn’t Bugs Bunny.”
“Gotcha.”
Charlie and Margaret sat down on a nearby bench near the door to a hallway. “I guess we just sit?” he said.
“What did Cagney say?” Margaret replied. “‘They pay me for the waiting, I throw the acting in for free.’”
From somewhere down the hall came a horrifying high-pitched shriek.
“Sweet Jesus, what in the hell?” Charlie asked as Margaret rushed toward the scream. Before she could make it far, however, a wheeled Madagascar cage was pushed around the corner. Inside perched a plump white bird with a long fleshy wattle.
The bird regarded Margaret with cold black eyes, then opened its beak to form a giant black diamond and let out another piercing scream, the loudest that Margaret, in all her years in zoology, had ever heard. It sounded almost like an air-raid siren, a warning for the town populace to run and hide.
Cast and crew on the set behind her filled the air with curses and complaints, but Margaret relished the moment.
The slender woman pushing the cage smiled mischievously. Her dark brown hair was in a tight bun, and she wore large-framed glasses, but underneath the professional exterior she exuded charisma. “It’s a special delivery for Mr. Frankenheimer,” she said.
“Margaret, this is Symone LeGrue,” Frankenheimer said. “My bird girl.”
“Bird handler,” LeGrue corrected him.
Though her zoological expertise was restricted to animals with four legs, Margaret had become a gifted amateur ornithologist over the years. “Wait,” she said. “I know this breed of bird. It’s from somewhere in the Caribbean, right?”
“Yes!” said LeGrue excitedly.
“A white, a white—” It was right on the tip of Margaret’s tongue. “Darn it.”
“A white bellbird,” LeGrue said.
“Right!” said Margaret. “From the Guianas! I just read about them in Birds of the Caribbean!”
“Robert Porter Allen, my hero!” said LeGrue.
“Sainted savior of the spoonbill,” said Margaret.
Charlie joined the group and listened intently, impressed, although he had zero idea what the two were talking about.
“Symone brought me all the sparrows and canaries for Birdman of Alcatraz,” Frankenheimer said. “Comes out this summer.”
“Right, looking forward,” said Charlie. “Love Lancaster.”
“But there are no birds in Manchurian Candidate,” Margaret noted. “Not in the screenplay we got.”
Frankenheimer shrugged. “The garden-club scene, I told Symone we were playing around with different ways to make it extra-weird. She said she had a spectacularly strange bird to show me, one that American audiences had never seen before.”
“You look familiar,” LeGrue said to Margaret. “Are you in animal training?”
“I wouldn’t call the canaries and sparrows you brought us particularly trained, Symone,” Frankenheimer joked. “I gotta finish up here. You can bring that to my dressing room, Evans will show you the way.” He pointed to a young woman with a broad smile.
“I’m a zoologist,” Margaret told Symone. “Margaret Marder. I do some teaching at Barnard. You’re a bird trainer?”
“My team does all animals, but I’m mainly birds,” LeGrue said. “Right now we’re doing the new Hitchcock up in San Francisco. It’s nuts.”
Fontaine reappeared, looking noticeably less relaxed than he had a few moments earlier. He approached them, ashen-faced.
“Manny, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Margaret said.
“The police are here. One of our actors on a different picture was found dead this morning.”
“Oh my God, no,” said Charlie. “Who was it?”
Fontaine seemed almost out of breath. “Chris Powell. He was a boxer in the Elvis flick Kid Galahad they’re shooting next door.”
“Did you know him well?” Margaret asked.
“What happened?” asked LeGrue.
“I don’t know yet. I knew him a bit. He was trouble, that kid. He and Sinatra got into it a few times. Fighting over a dame. This isn’t going to be good for anyone.”
Chapter Five
Beverly Hills, California
December 1961
Flashbulbs popped as the custom-made red Ghia L6.4 approached the Daisy, a drinking club on North Rodeo Drive—private, but no secret to the photographers and reporters who scavenged nightly for scoops they could sell to the tabloids. Dusk was beginning to settle on Beverly Hills, exaggerating the artificial bursts of light.
“These goddamn shutterbugs are everywhere, like mosquitoes,” snarled Peter Lawford from the front passenger seat as his driver eased his way through the swarm. The car was one of only twenty-six built; a few had been gifted to Rat Packers for the free publicity. Margaret and Charlie exchanged a glance in the back seat—once again, DC and normal life seemed a long way away.
“Take us around the block,” Lawford instructed the driver. “Let me get myself together.” He pulled down the visor, peered at himself in the tiny mirror, took out a comb, and began tending to his thick brown locks. Charlie had noticed that Lawford seemed limited in the use of his right arm and hand, a disability he hid rather well by making pronounced and dramatic gestures with his left.
Charlie had phoned Lawford a week ago after Attorney General Kennedy, the actor’s brother-in-law, had assured him that Lawford would help Charlie and Margaret insinuate themselves into the Rat Pack. Lawford, a bridge between the two worlds ever since his marriage to Patricia Kennedy—who came between Jack and Bobby in birth order—was only too happy to assist. He’d joined them at the Miramar for brunch last Sunday, and this was their second outing.
The brunch had been fun enough. Lawford spoke with a clipped British accent and seemed on the surface to be the embodiment of class and erudition, a real-life version of Dashiell Hammett’s Nick Charles, whom Lawford played on the NBC TV series. In actuality he was, Margaret thought, probably about half as bright. He was, however, full of gossip about both Hollywood and Washington, and seemed a good entrée to Sinatra.
As the driver rounded the block, the voice of a radio newsman filled the car.
…Castro’s admission that he is a Marxist-Leninist. President Kennedy vowed the U.S. would never accept any government not chosen through free and fair elections. In local news, police say they have no leads in the death of actor Chris Powell, whose corpse was found earlier this week in a room at the Santa Monica Hotel. Powell’s role in the Elvis Presley film Kid Galahad will be recast, United Artists says. In sports—
“When we get out of the car, these bloodsuckers are going to bombard me with questions about Powell,” Lawford said.
“Did you know him?” Charlie asked. “I heard he and Frank fought about a girl.”
“It’s seldom truly about the girl,” Lawford said.
The car circled back to the entrance of the club and Lawford turned on his beaming white smile, hopped out of the car
, helped Margaret out, and waved to the throng.
“One over here, Peter!” shouted a squat gray photographer. He resembled a toad, warts and all, topped by an obvious toupee. “Any comment on Powell?”
“Hi, Joey!” Lawford said, ignoring the question. “Say hi to Congressman Charlie Marder and his wife, Margaret. Charlie’s in town advising on Frank’s new picture. Charlie, this is Joey Tarantula,” he said, pronouncing it “Tah-ran-too-la.”
Tarantula snapped photographs of the three while shouting out a steady stream of questions, an accumulation of tabloid filler and innuendo: “Cops say it looks like a Mob hit. And what’s this I heard about Powell and Frank fighting over a girl?” Lawford ignored it all. “Thanks, Joey!” Lawford said, guiding Charlie and Margaret to the Daisy. The doorman nodded at Lawford and waved them in.
The Daisy, which had opened earlier that year, was the first private bar and dance club in the Greater Los Angeles area, a place for the rich and famous to drink and carouse without having to worry about gossip columnists or riffraff. The building took up a quarter of a city block, and membership was offered to a select group of Hollywood stars and power players as well as a few attractive, aspiring (and willing) young men and women carefully chosen and brought in by talent scouts.
A cocktail waitress rushed to them, took their drink orders, and practically sprinted to the bar. In the large main room of the club, oak-paneled and filled with a smog of cigarette smoke, were a well-stocked bar and a dozen small tables. At one of these, an aging Charlie Chaplin flirted with a barely adult Natalie Wood. Debbie Reynolds sat with a coterie of admirers; Kim Novak and Jayne Mansfield were at adjacent tables, each with an older man, each acting as if the other weren’t present. Standing at the bar, Tony Curtis slapped Troy Donahue on the back; near them, Sandra Dee was knee-deep in a drink that didn’t look so wholesome.
The waitress returned with bourbon rocks for Lawford and Charlie and a caipirinha for Margaret.
“This is a preposterous number of fabulous people,” Margaret said, taking a swig of her drink.
“Where else can they go on a Saturday night?” Lawford replied.
While overwhelmed by the sheer number of celebrities, Margaret was surprised at how much tinier they appeared in person. Liz Taylor was so short she almost resembled an elf, and walking in, Margaret had towered over several leading men. Also surprising were Rock Hudson’s drinking companions. They weren’t exactly the nubile young starlets Margaret might have expected; the strapping heartthrob, a vision of all-American swinging bachelorhood, had surrounded himself with four slim, handsome—even pretty—young men.
A framed photograph hung on either side of the doorway. One was an image of Sinatra punching a photographer in the nose, and the other showed Dean Martin holding a finger to his lips, an instruction: Shh.
“Our crew’s in the back,” Lawford said, pointing. Live jazz played in one of the rooms; the Daisy had so many, it was hard to keep track. Charlie recognized the tune: “Pfrancing,” from Someday My Prince Will Come. He polished off his bourbon in one gulp and began to lose himself in the tempo and the strutting trumpet solo, which sounded to him like a man crying.
“It’s like Miles Davis himself is here,” Margaret said. She was trying to keep cool, but she had her hand on his arm, and he could tell she was a bit thrilled. They followed Lawford through the crowd of stars, ogling in every direction and catching snippets of gossip:
So there was Rock in a mink, looking as fabulous as you might imagine, and the studio sent the goddamn pic to every paper from here to Piscataway like it was a joke, like ha-ha-ha, look at the he-man in the mink. If they only knew!
Ed Sullivan is boycotting anyone who goes on Paar. That’s just the reality of it.
No, no, no, you’re drunk, West Side Story is gonna end the year number one, Guns of Navarone two.
Nuremberg and Tiffany’s won’t be in the top ten. They didn’t make any money. They were just for awards.
As the journalists might say, Chris Powell couldn’t be reached for comment.
All of it reminded Margaret of when she and Charlie had first arrived in Washington, DC, in 1954. She’d seen then how stunningly, pathetically human the boldface names actually were—Senator Jack Kennedy hobbling around with his wretched back, Vice President Nixon as insecure as Othello. Margaret would read about a seemingly omnipotent committee chairman, witness him banging his gavel and throwing his weight around, only to meet him later at a cocktail party and see he was nothing more than a sack of neuroses with clever writers and a good poker face. Stalwart moralists were in truth libidinous bed-hoppers; Christian wives were beehived roundheels; iron-jawed anti-Communist crusaders were terrified of even a lightly critical editorial. Public images were as fragile as they were phony, Margaret had concluded, so it wasn’t surprising to find that the silver screen’s wholesome girls next door and pillars of manhood were, in reality, lascivious, desperate, drunk, sad.
They walked past a billiards room, where none other than Paul Newman was lining up a shot. Another, darker room was packed with couches and love seats. Finally, they took a right into yet another room, this one even smokier than the others. Congregated around a card table, perched on high leather stools, were Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and his young blond wife, May Britt, Shirley MacLaine, and two men wearing sunglasses and nondescript suits whom neither Charlie nor Margaret recognized. One was tan and good-looking with thick black eyebrows and a movie-star smirk; the other was pale and squat.
“Brother-in-Lawford!” Dean Martin called out, looking up from shuffling the cards. “Who are your friends?”
Lawford had been distracted by a curvy cigarette girl, but he turned back to the pack. “They’re working on Frank’s picture,” he said. “Consultants. Congressman Charlie Marder and his wife, Margaret.”
Sinatra looked up from the table as the new arrivals sat down. “Congressman.” He nodded pleasantly. Then to Margaret: “Madame.” She suppressed a grin. Then, to no one in particular and less pleasantly, he barked: “Can we change the music to something that swings? Enough jazz! I’d even listen to Dago sing ‘Volare’ instead of this.”
“Call the papers! Frank’s willing to listen to someone else sing!” Martin quipped.
Sinatra smiled as Martin dealt the cards clockwise around the table: Sinatra, Davis, Britt, MacLaine, Lawford, and the two silent men. He skipped Charlie and Margaret.
Charlie noticed, of course. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he got an unwelcoming feeling from Martin.
“You’re not dealing in the congressman and his missus?” Lawford asked him.
Martin paused. “We’ve never had three broads in one game before,” he observed.
“As long as they know the rules,” Sinatra said. He turned to Margaret. “You know the rules, right, dollface?”
Margaret loathed Marilyn Monroe’s breathless dumb-blonde persona, but she did a devastatingly accurate impression of it, as she demonstrated now: “The eights are crazy, right, daddy?”
Everyone laughed except Sinatra, who stared at Margaret for a moment and then looked down at the card table as he lit a cigarette. “Poor Marilyn,” he said, and shrugged.
The brief acknowledgment of Monroe’s downward spiral reminded Charlie of the way all good people sometimes followed words of sympathy with a shrug. The shrug conveyed a resignation, an understanding that humanity was fragile and life could be brutal. And in Sinatra’s case, Charlie thought, given that he’d treated Monroe as if she were just another piece of leftover cheesecake, perhaps his shrug also suggested that not just life but, yeah, maybe he himself could be brutal.
Sinatra’s blue-eyed stare had not signaled anything so psychologically complicated to Margaret; quite the contrary. His cool look had washed a warm wave over her. Thin and blond with bewitching hazel eyes, Margaret constantly had to fend off the inquiring gazes of congressmen at dinners; lawyers and CEOs at fundraisers; policemen and construction workers and shopkeepers in Man
hattan and Washington. She was not one to be easily charmed by power and charisma. When she’d encountered Sinatra on set, he was just a grump, but here he was in his glory, as confident as a matador, and she felt it. In a flash of his eyes, she fancied that she could see his temper and passion and the heart Ava Gardner had broken into a thousand pieces. Margaret found her own heart quickening its pace, and she glanced around the table to make sure no one could tell.
“Tell me, Congressman,” Martin said, looking at his cards, “don’t you have, like, laws and stuff to write? Something to do besides sit around drinking with a couple of crooners and their pals?” He smiled at Charlie, though there was definitely nothing friendly about the question.
“I felt it was my sworn duty to answer the call of your movie studio,” Charlie said. “And anyway, we’re on recess for another month.”
“Politics is just a lot of acting,” Margaret said. “I told Charlie he could learn a thing or two from the best. I’m a big fan of Mr. Sinatra—of all of you, actually—and we needed a little sun.”
“Honestly, Dino, what’s got your shorts in a bunch?” MacLaine asked. “It’s not as if we couldn’t stand to have someone hoist up our average IQ.”
Martin elbowed Sinatra and whispered in his ear. Sinatra turned. In the next room, a tall, handsome man with a jutting jaw and red hair was pressing the flesh like a city council candidate. He was dressed fashionably but obviously without the benefit of a movie star’s salary—thin maroon tie, shiny dark blue suit that didn’t quite fit, shoes that tried too hard. A bargain-basement Rat Packer.
“Detective Ellroy Meehan,” Lawford said to Charlie and Margaret. “He’s like the Showbiz Cop.”
“Here because of Chris Powell?” Margaret asked.
“Presumably,” said Lawford. “Want to meet him?”
“If I could,” said Charlie.
Lawford nodded.
