by Gore Vidal
“I see what she sees.” Frederika looked about her with a tourist’s fascination. “I only wish I’d seen more movies so that I’d know who everyone was.”
“It’s all a bit like—like Mardi Gras, isn’t it?” Blaise was not used to tropical or near-tropical societies. A day with the ownership of the Herald resembled what he’d always imagined it would be like to do business in Tahiti.
“That’s what makes it so—different. Caroline showed me her Mary Queen of Scots sets. Very authentic-looking, except for a tomato in the kitchen. I reminded her that North Europeans weren’t partial to tomatoes then. She was apologetic.”
Blaise was intrigued not by the anachronism but by the kitchen. “What would the Queen be doing in a kitchen?”
“Well, darling, it is Scotland. I suppose she cooks haggis for Bothwell.”
On the arm of her latest director and lover, William Desmond Taylor, Caroline made a slow, majestic entrance. At the door, photographers were allowed pictures; then they tactfully vanished.
“You’ve never looked more radiant.” Blaise needled Caroline.
“I know,” she said, giving her sister-in-law a kiss. “It is an inner light, actually. Either one has it, as Elinor Glyn would say, or one has not.”
Blaise found Taylor charming; very much the British gentleman as represented on the Broadway stage. He was tall, slender, and about Caroline’s age. Blaise wondered who on earth he really was. Caroline had told him so many of the original names and origins of the stars that he was suspicious of everyone, particularly Emma Traxler, the tragic fire-opal of Alsace-Lorraine, whose lady-mother had been drowned by Huns in her own moat. The spirit of Hearst now informed the Hollywood studios, and the result was beyond anything that the old yellow journalist ever dreamed of.
“When do you start shooting?” Blaise enjoyed using Hollywood jargon.
“April Fool’s Day,” said Taylor, smiling at Caroline. “We’ve got the right script at last. From Edward Knoblock.”
Blaise nodded; apparently, he was supposed to know the name.
“He wrote Kismet, that play which ran for years,” said Caroline. “He’s from New York but lives in London. He was one of the writers Mr. Lasky imported, along with Maeterlinck and Maugham and Elinor Glyn and all the others. He’s staying with William, and working on the script.”
Could this, Blaise wondered, be his sister, Caroline? The friend of Henry Adams and Henry James, now praising the author of Kismet? Or, perhaps, more to the practical point, was this simply Caroline’s Doppelgänger, Emma, an aging actress trying to survive in a fast, furious, unsentimental world? Frederika was positive that Caroline’s face had been tightened by surgery. Blaise thought not; on the other hand, she did look disturbingly perfect in a style that was not altogether human.
Taylor asked Frederika to dance, and half-brother and half-sister were able to talk. “The Herald,” Caroline began.
“Too expensive …”
“I’m told Hearst has already got it …”
“Through Barham? Probably. It was too late …”
“My fault. I should’ve made a move last year, but …”
They spoke in their own rapid private language; no ellipsis ever needed filling. Then he asked, “What’s happened to Tim?”
“Nothing. He’s still living at the Garden Court. Since you’re obviously curious, we’ve locked the door between our rooms.”
“I see.”
“Why should you?” Caroline watched Taylor and Frederika waltz decorously at the center of the dance floor. “Anyway, it’s all very friendly. We still work together, in a business way. He’s found someone younger.”
“And you’ve found someone older. He seems all right.” Blaise was still brooding upon the saga of Taylor and the two stars and the one mother. “He must be very popular.”
“Too much so.” Caroline was now her old candid self. “He is trying to get Mabel Normand to stop taking cocaine, and he is trying to keep Mary Miles Minter from killing herself for love.”
“Of him?”
“So it would seem.”
“Where do you fit in?”
“A woman of a certain age, warm, compassionate—wise, too, as only such a woman can be. One who has known heartbreak …”
“Is this you or Emma Traxler?”
Caroline laughed. “A bit of both. Don’t worry. I can keep the two apart. Anyway, after Mary, Emma will retire from the silver screen …”
“Home to Alsace-Lorraine?”
“No. Santa Monica. I want to go on producing movies.”
“With William Desmond Taylor?”
The director and Frederika came back to the table. Frederika was delighted. “Gloria Swanson is over there, with what looks like a genuine Latin lover type.”
“They all come here,” said Caroline, her eyes on Taylor as he took an envelope from his pocket and poured its contents into a glass of water.
“Cocaine?” Blaise was blithe.
Caroline glared at him. Taylor laughed. “No. For my ulcer. Occupational hazard. Once the shooting’s over, I want to get as far away from here as possible.”
“Summer in Europe,” said Caroline.
“Take him to Saint-Cloud.” Frederika was cozy.
“I must stay here.” Caroline drank real tea from a real teacup.
“Eddy—that’s Edward Knoblock—he’s let me his London townhouse, and I’m leaving him my place here in town. We met once before.” Taylor turned to Blaise. “Years ago. You were very young. So was I, of course. The English Antique Shop, 246 Fifth Avenue. Remember? I was the manager. Caroline came in, too. But not with you.”
“I thought you were an actor.”
“I was. But actors have to live. You were with a Frenchwoman …”
“Anne de Bieville,” murmured Caroline.
“You do have a memory,” said Blaise, who had none, at least of Taylor. He also found it disturbing that Taylor should have remembered him after all these years. But then if one had led other lives, it was probably best to confess them before one was found out. Taylor seemed authentic, despite a large diamond ring not usually found on a gentleman’s hand. But then this was Hollywood, as Taylor again demonstrated when he produced, at Frederika’s request, a platinum cigarette-case containing black cigarettes with gold tips.
The orchestra was now playing. “Blue Moon,” a new song that Blaise liked to sing when absolutely alone. He was beginning to see how one could succumb to the Tahitian charm of Southern California. The only mystery was how to get work done in so languorous a setting; yet the Hollywood people were never at rest if they could help it. A star could make a dozen feature-length movies in a year and still have time for a divorce and a remarriage. Of course, everyone was very young, except Caroline and Taylor.
While Taylor pointed out the stars to Frederika, Blaise came to the point. “Would you sell me your share—in the paper?”
Caroline looked at him for a long moment, looking, perhaps, for the silver lining. “Why—now?”
“Why—any time? You’ve lost all interest in it, and Washington, and politics …”
“Have I?” The famous—even to her half-brother—eyes opened very wide. They were luminous, and rather bloodshot. “Did I go to sleep out here for a hundred years and now it’s time to wake up, and no one’s left?”
“Well, I’m here. It may have seemed like a hundred years to you, but …”
“No. It’s gone very fast.” Caroline was suddenly serious. “Do I want to sell? I don’t know. Do I want to stay here? That depends.”
“On the next hundred years?”
Caroline nodded. “Marriage has been discussed,” she said under the music.
“Then you will have to stay here. I can’t see him … uh, happy in Washington.”
“Only discussed.” Caroline was vague. “I don’t know. Let’s see what happens to Mary. Those Elizabethan ruffs are a godsend for aging necks.”
A dark Latin lover stopped at their table: it was
the Spanish-born star Tony Moreno. There was much flashing of eyes and teeth during the introductions; then Moreno said to Taylor, “Can I see you a moment?” Taylor excused himself, and the two men left the nightclub.
“How handsome,” said Frederika, drawing out her syllables, “everyone is.”
“That’s because we don’t allow senators in public places.” Caroline was now looking toward the lobby, where, past two uniformed security men, Moreno and Taylor were talking intently. Blaise was beginning to get the range; and he was more intrigued than not by all the possibilities for disaster that Caroline was so compulsively arranging for herself. Suddenly, the two men in the lobby were no longer visible.
At that moment, a tall, elegant, overpainted woman paused at their table, with an escort half her age. “Dear Emma,” she said. The accent was deep Southern.
“Charlotte Shelby.” Caroline introduced the lady to Blaise and Frederika. The escort was ignored. Blaise rather liked the way that manners had been pared down to their essentials.
“You must come, Mr. and Mrs. Sanford, to pay us a call at the Casa de Margarita, our private mansion on New Hampshire Avenue, that’s when we’re not really back home on Mummy’s plantation in Shreveport, Louisiana.”
“I should love to, of course.” Frederika exuded her own District of Columbia Southern charm.
“Tell William hello and that little Mary is better.” Like Chaplin’s yacht in the Vienna Woods, Mrs. Shelby sailed on, escort in tow.
“What was that?” asked Frederika.
“An ex-actress named Charlotte Shelby,” Caroline began.
“Best known as the mother of Mary Miles Minter,” Blaise concluded, complacently.
“How do you know that?” Caroline was startled.
“I always read Photoplay magazine. You know, at the barber’s …”
“You do get around,” said Caroline neutrally. Then Taylor returned without Moreno. Caroline whispered something to him, and he waved to Charlotte Shelby across the dance floor and she, graciously, inclined her head. Blaise noticed that despite heavy make-up, the lady’s lips were thin and the mouth, compressed into a smile, was grim. Was she jealous of Caroline? Or relieved that Taylor was no longer enamored of the fabled child?
“… letters,” said Taylor. Then he led Caroline onto the dance floor.
“Well,” said Frederika.
“Well,” said Blaise.
“Do you think Mr. Taylor was being given drugs by the Latin lover?”
“Frederika! You have gone Hollywood, as they like to say out here.” But Blaise suspected that that might have been a part of a more complex transaction. He was also beginning to wonder whether or not Caroline might herself have got involved in drugs. Certainly, she was not at all the self that he had once known, but then, admittedly, they had never known each other well. Half-consanguinity was, perhaps, in itself, the equal to none. “Letters,” Taylor had said. Whose letters? Blaise wondered.
“She’ll come home.” Frederika sounded sad. “This can’t last for her—for anybody. But I can see the appeal. Imagine a place where no one cares who the new attorney general is or whether Mr. Harding is his puppet.”
“I think the attorney general might be the one politician that they’d all be interested in.”
Among the papier-mâché palm trees, there were guards—criminals, too. Even the Latin lover, Moreno, looked as if he might slit one’s throat simply for pleasure. The false jungle was a very real jungle, and Caroline could have it all, as far as Blaise was concerned. A life-size monkey doll at the base of a palm tree opposite suddenly began to blink glaring red electrical eyes.
3
On the Argyle Lot, now deserted at day’s end, bits and pieces of Edinburgh Castle had been re-created, and Caroline and Taylor strolled amidst their handiwork. “Well, now at least we know,” said Caroline, “what Mr. Griffith must have felt when he built Babylon.”
“Yes,” said Taylor, frowning, “and I know what his banker must have felt, too.” Although Traxler Productions footed the bill, it was Taylor who worried most about cost. So far, the production was nearly a hundred thousand dollars over its estimated budget and shooting had yet to begin.
Tim had been sardonic. “You could’ve rented all of Edinburgh for what you’re paying.” Then he had vanished into the Northwest to make the sort of film that would over-excite Caroline’s daughter and son-in-law. Thanks in part to their efforts, the film, with intercut footage of Woodrow Wilson, had been banned in most cities. Happily, as the new attorney general, Harry M. Daugherty, was not running for president, Tim might be allowed to continue at large for a while longer. To date, there had been only one scene about Taylor, which Caroline had Emma Traxlered with a nobility worthy of an Elinor Glyn heroine. Tim had most hurt her by being not jealous but mystified by her choice.
“I ride through the gate.” Caroline imagined herself on horseback, sidesaddle, a plume in her hat, the adoring Bothwell at her side. Attempts to get Barthelmess for Bothwell had failed; and an older actor was hired in order to make Caroline look young and helpless. As for Mary’s rival, Queen Elizabeth, they had nearly secured Sarah Bernhardt, whose stage version of Queen Elizabeth had filled French theaters since the dawn of time. But at the last moment the Divine Sarah had decided not to put at risk her legend a second time on dangerous truth-telling film. They had then hired a distinguished actress of seventy, who was guaranteed to make Caroline look kittenish. La Glyn had, quite seriously, offered her services in the interests of Authenticity, as she was also descended from the Tudor queen, but Caroline had assured her that she was far too handsome to be a foil for plain little Emma Traxler; rather rudely, La Glyn had agreed. “If you put it like that, Madame Traxler, you are absolutely right.” To everyone’s surprise, Elinor Glyn was now not only writing but producing her own films. She had become a Hollywood success, and was praised by the Kine Weekly.
“We’ll do all the exteriors first,” said Taylor. He took her arm; and she was pleased, as always, when he took the physical initiative. Thus far, nothing had happened between them, and for the first time in Caroline’s life, she had developed a sudden blind panic at the thought of age. Suppose there would be, at last, someone whom she wanted—as now—who did not want her? One who preferred young girls like Minter and Normand? What could she do? The demoralizing answer was nothing.
Caroline leaned very lightly against Taylor as they walked along the battlement from which Mary would stare in vain for her lover who, unbeknownst to her, was dead. Caroline felt spontaneous tears of self-pity rush to her eyes. Mary was a role that she was going to have to work very hard not to act.
Together they paused on the battlement and looked across the New York street to the high fence that surrounded the lot. All work had stopped for the day, but on certain sets technicians were making last-minute—overtime!—alterations. “Do you really think Mary should meet Elizabeth in the park rather than at the prison?” This was an on-going disagreement.
“We have to get outdoors by then. We’ve got six interiors in a row. The story’s getting too claustrophobic.”
“But I like that. It’s the way Mary would feel. I mean, she is a prisoner.” Taylor’s profile was nearly perfect. He had had his choice of film parts for years, but after his success in Captain Alvarez he had chosen to direct.
“Edward says it’s always worked in the park.”
Caroline did not much care for the plump New York Englishman Edward Knoblock, who stayed on and on in Taylor’s small bungalow, very much underfoot from Caroline’s point of view. “That is because Edward has stolen the plot from Schiller, and given him no credit.”
“Now, now.” Taylor was soothing. “Were it not for theft—tasteful theft, that is—we’d all be out of business here. Why didn’t your brother stay longer?”
“He thinks the government will stop if he’s not there to guide them. I used to be like that.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
Reflexively, Caroline counted t
o three to herself, the way that she had learned to do to insure the effectiveness of a close shot; then she spoke. “Yes, sometimes. This is more fun, of course. But one day I won’t be able to do it.”
“One day none of us will be able to do anything. Why anticipate?”
At that moment, they were joined by Charles Eyton, the chief of production for Famous Players–Lasky.
“Putting out the lights?” Taylor smiled.
“Don’t joke! That’s what I have to do. The waste that goes on around here!” Eyton was a very thorough practical man, much involved with everything and everyone at the studio, including outside production companies like Traxler. “Can’t wait to get started, I’ll bet,” he said, frowning at the gate to Edinburgh Castle.
Taylor anticipated him. “We’ll sell you the set, if you don’t use it until a year after our run.”
Eyton nodded, seriously. “I’ve got an Ivanhoe coming up. Same kind of castle, I guess. I mean, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.” He turned to Taylor. “It’s all squared away. But tell her to grow up.”
“That’s the one thing only nature can do, Charlie. She isn’t grown up.”
Taylor drove Caroline to his place on Alvarado Street. The bungalow was part of a building complex that had evolved, as far as Caroline knew, indigenously to Hollywood. A half-dozen bungalows were built on three sides of a courtyard containing palms and a fountain. On the fourth side was sidewalk and street. The owner of the complex occupied the first bungalow and acted as a concierge and armed guard. A well-known actor and his wife, friends of Taylor’s, lived across from him. Caroline quite liked the small-town life of the arrangement despite the publicness of all the comings and goings beneath the palms. But then, for privacy, one could enter Taylor’s bungalow from Maryland Avenue at the back. Caroline had come that way several times, prepared for love; instead she had got a candle-lit dinner, served by a villainous-looking servant called Eddie Sands; then they played backgammon.