“If Empire turns me down, I will take them to Paragon.”
“Look how good Leon has been to you, Roxanne,” she implored, gesturing around the living room of the tract house. “How supportive. You’d still be stacking up file cabinets in your back bedroom if you didn’t have this office.”
“Don’t confuse the issue. I made a bargain that I would accept Denise, be nice to her. I was nice to her, and I will be nice to her, but . . .”
“But what? Out with it.”
“I will never think of her as Mrs. Leon Greene.”
“So, you’re still smarting on behalf of Julia.”
“I suppose I am,” I said, remembering seeing Denise Dell in the Summit Drive breakfast room just days after we had buried Julia Greene. “Julia shouldn’t have died all alone in a foreign country while Denise lived in her house and slept with her husband. I can’t forgive him for that,” I said, even though I knew Julia had forgiven him—a fact I had never parted with, not even to Irene or Jonathan. I kept Julia’s letter in a desk drawer.
“Forgiveness works both ways. What if Leon reads these scripts and guesses what you’re up to, and he never forgives you?”
I thought about how Leon had declared Julia’s gift to the NAACP a betrayal, every bit as bad as adultery. An unforgivable betrayal. I said with false insouciance, “It’ll be a test for him, won’t it? If he truly hates anything with the tiniest Communist tinge, he’ll turn them down no matter what, even if they are perfect for Denise. When I was reading them last night, I could see her in these roles. She’s no Bette Davis. Bette Davis can do anything, but Denise can deliver a comic line.”
“Love or patriotism. You’d make Leon choose. His wife or his principles.”
I shrugged. “Life is full of choices.”
“You are tempting fate.”
“My middle name.”
“It’s too much to risk. What about Max?”
“What about him? He’s still in Mexico as far as anyone knows.”
She stubbed her cigarette out with more energy than the act required. “I want to go on record that in my opinion this is a reckless act.”
“Not my first.”
“And, no doubt, not your last.” She went back to typing so I knew she was sulking. I sorted through the mail till she finally spoke again. “Who will you ask to front for Max?”
“Charlie. He’d be grateful. He can be trusted.”
“He can be trusted because you’re sleeping with him?”
“That has nothing to do with it. No one else will know.”
“What about your pal Jonathan Moore? You and he are thick as thieves. He’s a bad influence. All those wild parties where people drink too much and dance around bonfires and take off their clothes. Everyone in this town knows about Casa Fiesta. The FBI could hang out there and—”
“The FBI at Casa Fiesta?” I laughed. “Those grim middle-aged men in their sweaty suits driving gray sedans? Not likely they could infiltrate Casa Fiesta. Besides, I won’t tell Jonathan, or anyone else. This stays strictly within these walls.”
* * *
• • •
When, later that afternoon, I offered Charlie the prospect of fronting for two comedies by Max Leslie, his clean-shaven jaw dropped. “I know Max Leslie’s work! I’ve always wanted to be that witty, that smart.” He jumped out of the chair and started pacing around my office. “Wow, I get to take the credit for a Max Leslie comedy?”
“There’s a lot of risk. If anyone finds out, we’d be branded as Communist sympathizers.”
“Yes, and you’d end up working at Pink’s Hot Dogs.” He grinned. “I’d move to Australia to surf.”
“Not funny.”
“Hell, Roxanne! Of course I’ll do it! I’m a true-blue American! Everyone knows that. I played football at Huntington Beach High. You can tell Mr. Leslie I’m honored. I hope one day I can meet him and shake his hand.”
“That won’t happen. He’s in Mexico.” Charlie didn’t need to know the particulars of Max and Marian’s situation, much less that they were living sixty miles from LA. “This has to stay an absolute secret, you understand. You know what’s at stake.”
“You’d have to be living in a North Dakota root cellar not to know what’s at stake.”
* * *
• • •
When I was in high school I was so well known at Empire Studios I could drive the family Packard around the lineup at the gates with just a wave at the guard. Now I waited in line watching the heat needle of the MG rise. The huge Babylonian gates were two pillars in the shape of elephants, connected across the top with a frieze of fanciful palms. Leon inherited the gates when he bought out Babylon Pictures back in 1918 and turned it into Empire. I finally pulled up to the booth, but neither my car, nor my name, nor, for that matter, my distinctive face, were known to the uniformed guard. Not till I said I had an appointment with Elliott Dunne did he allow me to pass.
Once you drove past the fanciful Babylonian gates, Empire Pictures was as utilitarian as an army base. Sunlight bore down on the stark walls of soundstages and glimmered up off ribbons of asphalt. Men pushed trolleys laden with costumes of all sorts, and sets and trucks idled in doorways where costumed extras stood outside smoking. (Only the brass and the big stars got to ignore the No Smoking signs posted everywhere inside.) Small trucks and vans, some stacked with scenery and lighting, plied the lanes between buildings and soundstages. Beyond the soundstages were the various offices, the Writers’ Building, Wardrobe, and Editing, and they too looked like an army base: two-story barracks with metal stairs. I drove past the commissary, where the patio was bedecked with tables sheltered by red-and-white umbrellas and tall palms that cast little shade. Beyond this was the Executive Mansion (yes, that’s what they really called it), three stories of cream-colored splendor, a stupendous contrast to the rest of the place, and a colossal waste of real estate. A path lined with palms and lacy jacarandas led to the broad steps, and a pale marble fountain burbled out front. A sharp-faced gorgon sitting at a desk by the door demanded to know my business.
“I’m here to see Elliott Dunne,” I said. “I’m Roxanne Granville.”
“Second floor on the right. I’ll let them know,” she said, pressing on a button.
As a kid I had bounded up the tiled staircase, taking them two by two, to go up to Leon’s office, where he welcomed me anytime, opening his arms and calling me Honeybee. Now I walked slowly and soberly, woozy with anxiety over what I was about to do. I paused, my hand on the mahogany rail. I might have turned around and left, but I looked up. All the framed posters lining the staircase were films starring Denise Dell.
“Roxanne!” Elliott himself came out to greet me and usher me into his carpeted office. “I’m so glad to see you so soon after the party.”
We rattled along with the usual exchanges prefacing these encounters. At L’Oiseau d’Or they taught us a useful feminine art, a mannerism said to have been perfected by Josephine and practiced on Napoleon. A woman, especially when speaking to a man, would drop her voice, gently, not quite to a whisper. The art lay in the nuance. Her listener would have to bend closer to hear, evoking both a sense of intimacy and an air of importance to whatever was being said. The woman was thus made to seem both alluring and imperative in the same moment. I used it with Elliott. “I have here a couple of scripts by one of my writers, Charlie Frye, one of my finest writers, and I just think they’re perfect for Empire.”
“Tell me about them.” He leaned in closer. We sat on a couch of Italian leather.
I offered up the stories in an appealing way, and he listened, clearly charmed, but finally, he stopped, shook his head. “Sorry, but Empire is looking for something bigger.”
“Like The Robe? It cost four million dollars to put all those Roman centurions in their cute armor up on the screen in CinemaScope. Empire is too small to do somet
hing on that scale. These are cheap. Easy to film. Easy to market. We’ve always been known for the clever comedies, the—”
“We?”
I flushed. “Force of habit. I grew up on this lot. Empire was my playground.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the stories. You and Jonathan Moore.”
“Kid stuff. We were terrors.”
“Not childhood sweethearts?”
“Oh, no.”
Elliott seemed pleased. He took the two scripts from me and leafed through them. “I’ll read them and get back to you. Actually, we have an unexpected hiatus in production right now, and something like this might suit us.”
No doubt the less-than-stellar box office of Banner Headline had Empire executives scurrying around like lemmings, but I said nothing of the sort.
“What else has Charles Frye done?”
“Well, his Return of the Cat People just sold,” I lied. I skipped the Dragnet episode altogether. “This sort of comedy is Charlie’s great forte, you know, the kind of film where you get misty at the end and walk out of the theater thinking that the world’s a better place. One of these could be the next Sabrina. Four-million-dollar box office.” I went on at length, lauding Charlie’s many gifts as a comedic writer, astonished at the ease with which these lies tripped off my tongue. Had I made a sentimental mistake with Charlie? Maybe I should have asked Maurice Allen to front for these comedies. Maurice, while a little astringent, was a more sophisticated writer, a more sophisticated person. I felt a stab of remorse, and a flutter of anxiety jelling into fear, but the scripts were literally in Elliott’s hands, and it was too late to turn back.
Chapter Twelve
I drove to Summit Drive on a sunny Saturday afternoon wearing a broad-brimmed sun hat and a pale yellow sundress that complemented my tan. The family was celebrating Gordon Junior’s ninth birthday at Leon’s house with a party by the pool. By the time I arrived, Gordon Junior had already gotten his big present, a miniature car that he was barreling around the pool area and over the grass, honking the horn, scaring the hell out of his younger siblings, crowing with delight, and alarming the servants who were bringing drinks and food. All Irene’s children are brats, even the two-year-old, Cindy. I put my present on the table, and set myself the task of being genial while I braced myself for the possibility that my grandfather would guess I was representing the work of a man he thought to be a traitor to America. In the two weeks since I’d sent the scripts to Elliott, I’d had more than one attack of sender’s remorse, made worse because I could share my anxiety with no one, not even Thelma. After all, she was on record as disapproving.
There was an empty chaise beside Irene, who looked as though she had been carved in white marble. She wore a sort of beach peignoir, since she burned easily, and smoke lazed up from her cigarette. “Where’s Jonathan?” she asked.
“Probably nursing a hangover.” I thanked Clarence as he handed me a Campari and soda. “I went to a party at Casa Fiesta last night where everyone but me was beautiful and drunk.”
“You are beautiful.”
“Oh, come on. I might be smart. I might have a French education and a father knighted by the queen, I might own a diamond ring, a diamond choker, ruby earrings, and a rope of perfect pearls, but you know as well as I, I will never be beautiful.”
“Then why weren’t you drunk?”
“Al Gilbert was camped outside in his car taking names, and it just struck me as tawdry. I think I might have outgrown Casa Fiesta.”
“About time. Jonathan should be outgrowing it too.”
“Oh, I doubt that will happen.” I didn’t say more. Didn’t want to be disloyal and admit that Jonathan’s need for an ever-shifting entourage of affection sauced with competition was just short of insatiable.
Denise floated over to us. She wore a turquoise beach cover-up cinched at the waist that emphasized her long, shapely legs. She adjusted a table umbrella to shade her fair skin. We chatted, cotton candy talk, sweet but insubstantial, as she settled into a chair by my side. Then she said, “Elliott Dunne gave me two scripts by your writer, Roxanne. Tell me about this Charles Frye. Why haven’t I ever heard of him?”
“He’s young, like me. Like you.” I was glad we were all wearing sunglasses.
“Does Charlie write comedy?” asked Irene, coming suddenly to life. “The last time I talked to him, he was touting his Coast of Heaven like it was On the Waterfront.”
I gave a blithe chuckle and burbled on about how he could do drama, but he loved comedy, pretending he had gone through twenty drafts to achieve the frothy perfection of You Make Me Feel So Young and Fly Me to the Moon.
Leon and Elsie joined us. Elsie was pale and puffy and clad in a flowered tent. Leon looked as if he had stepped off the Riviera, dressed in shorts and a sailor’s jaunty, striped shirt, with a yachtsman’s cap atop his wiry gray hair. He placed a hand on Denise’s shoulder, which she reached up and stroked as he sat down beside her. He too wore sunglasses, so I could not read his expression, but I could feel sweat pop on my brow that had nothing to do with heat.
“We’re talking about Charles Frye, Pooks,” Denise said, using their pet name that always made my skin crawl. Imagine calling a man like Leon Greene a name you might give to a Pekingese lapdog. “Elliott sent them on to me. I think they’d be great for me.”
“He sent them to me too. I’m not convinced,” said Leon in his executive voice, which I took as a bad sign. “I’m surprised you’d bring them to Empire, Roxanne. You don’t want to look like you’re relying on nepotism, do you?”
“Oh, nepotism.” Irene brushed that away. “There’s nothing wrong with nepotism. Hollywood is one big happy family. Well, maybe not happy.”
Elsie offered, “I think both these scripts are perfect for Denise. They highlight her best gifts.”
“They’re old-fashioned,” said Leon. “You Make Me Feel So Young is like Miracle on 34th Street without Santa.”
Since this was exactly my own estimation, I quickly put my drink to my lips and hid behind the glass.
“All those wise-cracking dames from the thirties, they’re passé now,” he added.
“Yes,” said Irene, sighing, “now women are content with dialogue so dry it might as well have come from Egyptian tombs. ‘O mighty Pharaoh, my lord, I beseech thee . . . ’ Why can’t the girls have any spirit?”
“Maisie in Fly Me to the Moon has spirit,” I said. “A character like Maisie, a lowly lab assistant, falls in love, but she has to do something smart, something unconventional to get her man.”
“She lies to him,” said Leon. “She deliberately misleads him, creating messages from the moon. I don’t think we should make pictures that celebrate subterfuge. It’s un-American. It sends an un-American message from the screen.” His brow creased in a frown.
“No one wants characters who are saints,” I said. “Look at Casablanca. Everyone in that movie is morally compromised.”
“That was wartime,” said Leon. “This isn’t.”
I could feel the birthmark flush.
“But she does it for love, Pooks,” said Denise, placing her hand on his knee. “She lies because she loves him. And if you think about it”—Denise paused for effect, thinking about it—“she’s actually lying when she lets Professor Bleeker think she’s just really dim. Really, she’s very smart.”
“These comedies,” Leon scoffed, “they’re throwbacks. I mean, we used to do them in the old days, crank them out, five or six a year. I want something more elegant for you, angel, more modern, something sleek. You’d be wasted as the frumpy Maisie, wouldn’t you agree, Roxanne?”
Panache will sometimes suffice when real courage fails. “It’s true Maisie doesn’t start out in an evening gown, but—”
“Nor does she end up in one,” Leon reminded us.
Sunlight blinking up off the pool played across my field of vision,
and I wished like hell I’d listened to Thelma, but I went on, “Fly Me to the Moon has a lively woman at the center, not some tough private eye, not some oil-chested Pharaoh, but a woman who grows more beautiful because she has brains. I think that’s a picture women will want to see.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” said Denise. “They’re wonderful scripts, charming, and funny and endearing. They suit my talents. You do know how great I’d be, don’t you, honey?”
“Of course.” Leon took off his sunglasses and beamed at her.
“Well, Pooks, you’re the boss, you decide, but I think I would shine.”
And with that Denise stood, dropped the cover-up, and poised herself for a moment, her voluptuous glory molded in an aquamarine swimsuit, before she walked to the diving board, treating it like a model’s runway. She executed a dive as perfectly as Esther Williams might have done. We all watched, spellbound.
“I want the best for her,” said Leon, speaking directly to me.
Denise burst to the surface, shining. The bright blonde mane of her hair cast back and the sheer energy she radiated sparkled all over her, sunlight reflecting rainbows on every drop of water that beaded on her skin. Her glory reflected in Leon’s eyes, in his face, in his smile.
“I want your next picture to be the one people are still talking about in ten years,” Leon said as she gracefully hoisted herself from the water. “I want you to shine.”
“That’s exactly what I want, Pooks.”
“I want an all-American comedy for you.”
“Oh, Charlie Frye is all-American,” said Irene with a trilling laugh. “He likes John Philip Sousa. You know . . .” And she started humming “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as she marched off like a drum majorette rounding up her brood, because Clarence was wheeling out the birthday cake.
* * *
• • •
Perhaps ten days later I put the phone down and staggered up from my chair and into the front office, where Thelma sat typing away. She looked up at me, her face lit with alarm. “Who died?”
The Great Pretenders Page 11
