by Lee René
Maybe he was a louse, but at least he was an honest louse. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stein. I sure wish you had told me all this before that night.”
He looked up, and his eyes bore into me, but I didn’t get the creeps as I usually did. I finally saw vulnerability in his handsome face. Neither of us spoke, and I found the silence unbearable. I’d gotten everything off my chest. Time to shove off.
“I guess I should be on my way. Goodbye, Mr. Stein.”
He called out to me when I turned toward the door. “Mitzi, are you still afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Do you still hate me?”
“No, sir.” I turned and faced him one final time. “May I ask, what was Mrs. Stein’s name?”
“Dara. Her name was Dara.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Stein.”
His sobs began the moment I closed the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Aftermath
Leah chattered away the entire drive home. “Omar, darling, you should hear the praise for my Mitzi. They worked on one scene for two whole days. David insisted on close-ups, special lighting, everything they do for stars. Today, I heard that Mitzi cried on cue. I had reservations about this movie, since she’d be working with that louse Rex Dallas, but wiser heads prevailed. She made her sister proud.”
I ignored Leah’s blabbing and thought of Mr. Stein’s dead wife, Bobby Fayette getting kicked out on his ear, and Buster Sweet stuck working with that bigoted toad Rex Dallas. The folks at Regal didn’t need writers to make up stories; they could have filmed their own lives. I needed to sort it all out in silence, but Leah never stopped talking. It was “David” this and “Ida” that. I bet she would have shut up quick enough if I told her how Mr. Stein kept fiddling around with my bosoms.
“David and I were talking earlier today. He wants us to leave the Dorchester for a place closer to the studio. They have lovely accommodations for the contract players, and two flats have just become vacant. It looks like we’ll be moving up in the world.”
Swell.
I’d had some peace since Leah had started stepping out with Omar. Strange, wasn’t it? She loved a colored man, the ultimate forbidden fruit, but since no one really knew exactly what Omar was, nobody said a word. I guess that’s what they call irony. That night I cried myself to sleep and dreamed of Chick running to me, his arms open, smiling. I woke up and cried even more.
Leah and I spent the next few days packing for our move to West Hollywood. I didn’t make a peep when Leah informed me Omar would be joining us. She hadn’t been so happy since before Pops became ill, and I didn’t want to be a wet blanket. The Dorchester may not have been the swankiest place in town, but it had been our home for over a year. We were abandoning our old life, and although it didn’t seem to matter to Leah, it did to me.
Before we left, I said my goodbyes to Mrs. LaRue, the pensioners, and all the familiar places, including the new Broadway Ritz. They’d gussied up the old gal and fashioned her into a medieval castle, minus the moat. I peeked through glass doors into the refurbished lobby. The ushers wore hunter green uniforms with gold epaulets. A massive mural of the English countryside decorated the lobby, and grand chandeliers hung from beams of solid oak.
The ticket seller looked at me with a haughty air. “Hey, miss, do you want to buy a ticket?”
I shook my head and walked off. Without the Mighty Wurlitzer, the Ritz had lost her soul.
****
Regal Pictures built the Casa de Monte in 1924 to house its contract players and designed it in the Spanish Mission style with a red tile roof and stucco walls resembling ivory meringue. Twelve spacious apartments surrounded a terra cotta courtyard, quite a change from the respectable squalor of the Dorchester and Bunker Hill.
Fiery bougainvillea crawled up the walls of the rear terrace. Trees of every kind—orange, lemon, peach, and fig—surrounded the place, including one bearing a marvelous fruit called avocados. The entryway to our flat led to a pale yellow living room with parquet floors polished to a high sheen and a vaulted ceiling embellished with carved moldings. Once Omar positioned our furniture to Leah’s satisfaction, anyone visiting our new apartment would have sworn we’d lived in the Casa forever.
Omar took a smaller flat near ours, and Leah spent much of her time there. Minus his Pullman porter’s uniform, our neighbors referred to the swarthy young fellow as “that Turkish gent who works for Mr. Roth.” Although I loved the Dorchester, I knew life here would be better. For one thing, Leah and I wouldn’t have to schlep across town for work. The builders had located the Casa only four short blocks from Santa Monica Boulevard and the Regal Pictures lot.
I tried to concentrate on finding Uncle Baron’s grave, but night and day, my thoughts were on the elusive Chick Hagan. I even sought out Betty to give me the lowdown on Jill Carpenter and the man I loved. She shook her head and sniggered. “You can forget about Chick Hagan. Miss Carpenter is one determined lady and has sunk her claws into him. No other dame gets near him if she’s around.”
Still, nothing could dissuade me. When I slept, I dreamed that he swept me into his arms, swore he adored me, and planted a big one on my lips. It had better happen soon or, I swore, I’d curl up into a ball and die.
At twilight, I walked into the courtyard where a whimsical fish statue covered in Mexican tiles spouted into a fountain. The fragrance of jasmine, gardenias, and sage enveloped the courtyard. A breeze set the wind chimes in motion. The metallic tinkling, the music of gushing water, and the scent of the perfumed air swept me away. Everything would be perfect if only Chick would appear and take me in his arms. I made a wish: Please bring me my one true love, and make it snappy.
“A penny for your thoughts, Dollface.”
A man’s shadow moved toward me—Chick coming to make my dreams come true. No, just my luck, David Stein strolled over carrying a huge bouquet of red roses.
“Hello, Mr. Stein.”
He moved close enough for me to see his smile. “Gee, Mitzi, I didn’t think you’d turn back flips to see me, but why the downcast face?” He chuckled, yet his laughter seemed hollow. “Were you expecting someone? A beau, perhaps?”
What a first-class dip. “No, I wasn’t expecting anyone, and you know very well I don’t have a beau.”
When he chortled at my words, I wanted to kick him right in the keister. “Well, I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d drop by and see how you and your sister are settling in.”
Before I could tell him to beat it, Leah stepped out of our flat. “Mitzi…” She paused and her eyes brightened. “Oh, my goodness, it’s David. Please, come in. Come in.”
The worm grinned at me as he sauntered into the living room. He handed Leah the bouquet with a grand flourish. “These are for you, Leah, just a little housewarming gift.”
When Leah squealed like a twelve-year-old, I knew all was lost. “Oh, David, they are lovely.” She rushed off to the kitchen.
Mr. Stein gave our apartment a quick once-over and called to her, “Leah, you’ve made this such a charming place. It proves home is where the heart is.”
Brother, did he lay it on thick, and Leah swallowed his bushwah, hook, line, and sinker. She waltzed back into the dining room with the flowers arranged in the vase I’d pinched from the Ritz.
“You must stay for dinner. Now that we have a real kitchen, I’m cooking up a storm.”
He placed his hat on the end table and grinned. “Gee, thanks.” Drat, he’d marked his territory as surely as if he’d peed on it.
Leah plunked the vase in the middle of the dining room table. “Mitzi darling, set another place.”
He flashed another triumphant smile. What else could I do? Lacing his food with rat poison would be inhospitable. Then it happened, the most embarrassing, humiliating thing in the whole wide world, my dear sister uttered those fateful words. “David, let me show you some photos of my family.”
I raced into the kitchen to avoid witnessing something as in
evitable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, her showing off our family and my childhood pictures.
“This is my dear mother. She died in the influenza epidemic, as did your poor brother, or so I heard. This is Pops, such a handsome fellow, me in the Jewish Girl Scouts, and Mitzi at four, already in grade school, reading and writing. Our little genius at six, her first recital. But these are my favorites.”
While I set the table, I suffered the ultimate humiliation. She pulled out my baby pictures, the naked ones. The kvelling began with renewed vigor and reached a fever pitch.
“David, have you ever seen a more beautiful baby? Look at that adorable tush. My mother would kiss her little rump every morning after she bathed her.”
I heard a masculine chuckle. “I would have kissed it too.”
Nothing is more mortifying than a conversation about tush kissing, but I refused to let that crumb enjoy my discomfort, so I stayed in the kitchen.
I listened to the oohing and aahing as Leah dragged out all the other family photographs and plopped them in front of Mr. Stein. At one point, he asked, “Is this Mitzi?”
Leah answered with a giggle. “Not our Mitzi, but her namesake, our great-aunt Mitzi. You’re not the first person to notice the resemblance.”
I knew they were looking at a print of the enameled image affixed to her tombstone. The first Mitzi had concealed her black locks beneath a sheitel, one of those ugly wigs Orthodox matrons wore, but her heart-shaped face and doe eyes were testaments to her beauty.
Something must have amused him because Mr. Stein laughed. I popped my head into the living room to see what had caused the laugh. He held the photo Zisel had taken of me the day we left New York, the one I hated like the plague.
“This is the way Mitzi looked when I first met her. I wonder if you could bear to part with it for a few days. I’d like to make a copy of it for, uh, publicity.”
Leah handed it to him with a laugh. “Take it, take it. Mitzi never liked it anyway.”
He pocketed the photo and continued perusing other images of Schectors, all the while mumbling polite comments. When I finally emerged, I found Mr. Stein at the bookcase examining Pops’ collections—Dickens and Shakespeare, his bound folios of violin music, and the Yiddish stories he loved.
He moved on to the photos of our long-dead Viennese relations, sepia-toned ghosts from an era of bustles and lace fans. One of Uncle Baron’s portraits sat on the mantel next to great-grandmother’s menorah. Leah had placed a photograph of my matinee-idol uncle next to one of my father posed dramatically in his tuxedo.
“My, what a good-looking family, Leah.” He picked up Uncle Baron’s portrait. “Who is this dashing fellow?”
“Baron, my late uncle. I’d hoped that Ida had mentioned him to you. You see, Uncle Baron died with Clarice Dumont in that horrible fire.”
He whistled. “Gosh, Leah, I didn’t know. Does Ben have any idea you were related?’
Leah took the photo from him and placed it back on its perch. “Yes, he does, but, well, he won’t talk about Uncle Baron. Could you, would you, ask him?”
Mr. Stein shook his head. “No, no, no. Sorry, I’d love to help, but the surest way to get Ben’s dander up is to mention that fire. You see, it’s personal with him. His father had a bad ticker and died trying to put out the blaze. Take it from me, nobody talks about that fire to Ben, nobody.”
Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut, but couldn’t stop myself. “Uncle Baron was Clarice Dumont’s lover.”
Mr. Stein’s mouth jaw dropped, and the front door opened at the same moment. Omar strolled in. He dined with us every night, and I knew he didn’t expect to see the Icebox talking to Leah. The two fellows stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. Then Mr. Stein smiled and marched up to him, hand extended.
“Hello, Omar, it’s good to see you. So we’re all having dinner together? That’s grand.”
Well, at least he wasn’t a bigot.
Leah served her special brisket of beef garnished with potatoes and carrots, and Mr. Stein kept up the palaver the whole time. Omar and Leah seemed enchanted by our guest, and he regaled them with stories of his life. I, on the other hand, remained silent because I knew he was a fink and a degenerate.
“Ben offered me a job after high school, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. Pop said, ‘Benny, my boy is a scholar, and he’s going to a big university so he can learn to handle the goyim.’ ”
Leah tittered, Omar guffawed, and Mr. Stein glanced at me sideways as if he wanted me to join in the festivities. I didn’t.
“Pop had his heart set on Harvard, but they had an even tighter quota than Yale. All those Boston gentiles were sore about Jews winning academic honors, but, well, Pop knew some people and pulled a few strings.”
He smiled, but his green eyes were smoldering. I’d heard all the horror stories about Jewish boys at Harvard and the other Ivy League schools, so I understood. “They barred us from the fraternity houses and all the societies, but I couldn’t let a bunch of spoiled brats stop me, could I? I’d been called Jew Boy before.”
He looked at Leah’s shocked face and flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry about being a killjoy. Anyway, that’s all behind me. I’m Ben’s partner, and here I am.”
Leah patted him on the knee. “And it’s our gain, David.”
Goodness, Leah laid it on almost as thick as Mr. Stein did, and I wanted to puke. I took a deep breath and stifled my yawns while he told Omar and my sister his plans for Regal’s future. “People may chide us over the content of our films, but the box office proves folks want more from movies than just a bunch of pretty people waltzing across the screen in nice clothes.”
Yeah, now they wanted pretty people waltzing across the screen in the buff.
By the end of the evening, Mr. Stein had eaten so much brisket I figured it would probably take a crane to get him out of the chair. Omar kept refilling his glass with some of the “medicinal” wine he sold on the side. Mr. Stein sipped a bit and settled back in his chair. Maybe he’d move in with us. Leah had had one glass too many and giggled like a fourteen-year-old.
“Now that we have a Frigidaire, we can enjoy some of the finer things in life, like ice cream.”
Her words were my cue to leave the room. “I’ll take care of it, Leah.”
I raced into the kitchen and spooned ice cream into Bubbe’s Austrian china dessert bowls. Finally, we got to use our good dishes. David Stein walked into the room and toward me. I glared, and when he realized he’d moved too close, he took a step back.
“I have to leave after dessert, but here’s some good news for you. You’re going to start work on another picture, and, Dollface, you’re the leading lady.”
Every girl on the lot hoped to hear those words, especially a contract player like me. Of course, it didn’t mean I was the star of the film, but I’d never played a big role before. I finally did have something to blush about. “Really? Me? A leading lady? That’s swell, David.”
He was silent for moment and stared into my face. “You called me David.”
I guess I had. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
From the way he looked at me, you’d have thought I’d handed him the moon on a silver platter. Then a sly smile danced across his lips, and I knew something was up.
“Since I’m truly the bearer of good news, guess who your leading man is? Chick Hagan.”
I had to grab the counter so I wouldn’t swoon like some damsel in a Victorian melodrama. I’d finally be working with the man I loved. The sheer bliss must have shown on my face. David started laughing, but as usual, it sounded empty.
“You’re sweet on that guy, aren’t you?”
“I’m just happy to be working. Does it really matter how I feel about Chick? A lot of girls are mad about him.” I looked him dead in the eye. “Why do you care anyway? Aren’t you stepping out with that high-hat shiksa, Miss Vassar?”
David laughed, a real laugh, not one of his fakes.
The nerve of the guy. “Doll, I didn’t peg you for the jealous type. I’m flattered. By the way, her name is Beth.”
I refused to take the bait. “I simply stated a fact, and by the way, I don’t care who you see.”
He took my face in his hands, and I didn’t pull away. “Maybe one day you will care.”
We stood gazing at each other for a long moment. David looked as if he was angling for a kiss, but once again remembered himself and stepped back with a nervous laugh.
“The title is Kids on the Lam. It’s no epic, but it will be a heck of a lot better than what you’ve done so far. We have a decent budget, the script is aces, and Willy is chomping at the bit to prove he’s got the hang of talking pictures. In two weeks, we start filming in a little dump called Carlisle, a farming town in the Central Valley, about two hundred miles from here. Funny thing about Carlisle, it’s where Clarice shot The Southern Belle.”
My stomach nearly dropped to the floor. Uncle Baron and Clarice had been in Carlisle together.
David searched my face. “Is something wrong? I thought you’d be pleased.”
I prayed my smile would convince him that life is just a bowl of cherries. “Oh, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s hunky-dory.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Carlisle
Hollywood Invades Carlisle
The Carlisle Republican, June 11th, 1932
Our quiet hamlet will be the location for more than growing grapes this summer! The citizens of our fair city have become stargazers since the Southern Pacific Railroad chugged into town with the cast and crew of Regal Pictures. The illustrious director Willy “One-Take” Taylor is at the helm of the modern drama Kids on the Lam. Popular Negro comedian Buster Sweet and crooner extraordinaire Chick Hagan are the principal players along with lovely newcomer Mitzi Charles, whose rise to stardom has been spectacular.
Regal Pictures has not been a presence in Carlisle since 1923 when they filmed The Southern Belle here. The silent drama starred Clarice Dumont in her final role before her tragic death.