AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  None of which actually got him home. Well, he’d have to pawn his watch – again. At least it would be for the last time. The very last time.

  He went to a call-box, called Clint collect. Clint was surprisingly easy about that, asked him to go back and sign some papers. And said he’d lend him some money. And when he was able to tell Fleur and Kathleen that that was what had been arranged, he felt really deep-down good about it.

  He arrived in Los Angeles in the late afternoon a month later; Brendan stepped out of the plane, felt the warmth fill him to his bones, looked up at the intense blue sky, and the palm trees carved into it, and knew he was going to be happy. Not even the thought of Hilton Berelman waiting for him, not even the memory of Kathleen sitting up in bed in her room in the private hospital, very bright-eyed, making him promise to come back soon, no, not even the creases on his shirt left by Fleur as she clung to him sobbing at the airport, finally having to be prised off by Kate and Edna, to the accompaniment of promises of visits, of presents, of a home prepared for them both in Los Angeles and the reminder of the summer camp she was booked into, none of it damaged the pleasure of that moment.

  The studio had sent a car; Hilton had been promised a limo and a limo it was not, he explained slightly petulantly, but it was a big shiny Studebaker with a driver in a grey suit which seemed pretty impressive to Brendan. All the way into town, along the freeway, Hilton who was also big and shiny with oddly pale skin, slicked back black hair and a sprayed-on smile, was making notes in his diary; he kept asking the driver things, hopefully, whether he had any messages for him from the studio, or whether a dinner had been fixed for the evening, and the driver just said ‘No, sir,’ in a very flat voice which implied he didn’t think it was worth making any kind of effort for Hilton. The drive seemed rather dreamlike to Brendan; it was early evening by then and they were driving straight into the sunset which dazzled him, so he could hardly make out anything ahead except rows of bouncing, lurching cars and the great fluorescent stretch of blue sky. Then they turned in off the freeway, and everything shot back into focus: the wide, straight boulevards, the lines of palm trees by them, the mass of huge, shiny cars, the dazzle of white, surprisingly low buildings.

  Hilton had said he would be put up at the Chateau Marmont; Brendan had expected some crummy motel with fancy windows, and was amazed at the sight of it, set high above the street, and built in stone, with high towers and leaded windows, high iron gates and huge oak doors. Brendan, who had flown extensively over France, had no difficulty acknowledging the style; the whole thing, it seemed to him, was like a film set in itself.

  His room was not at the front of the Chateau which disappointed him, but what it lacked in view it made up for in style; it was large and lavish, with its own bathroom, and a couch, desk and chair all in the same odd Louis Quatorze style, so it had pretensions almost to being a suite. And he could always sit in the bar, and look out over the city, he told himself, as he showered and changed, and ate some of the fruit which was in a large basket in his room. He expected to have quite a lot of time sitting in the bar; he was still deeply suspicious as to the outcome of this adventure.

  He and Hilton dined that night with a young, highly enthusiastic press agent who had been assigned Brendan as his task of the week; his name was Tyrone Prentice, and he had a lot of ideas. He kept calling Brendan Byron and smiling at him rather contemplatively. Brendan said he couldn’t see what point there was dreaming up publicity for him when he hadn’t even done a test, but Tyrone said in a shocked voice that publicity was what Hollywood was all about, and you couldn’t begin too early. ‘Then if your test goes well, even if you don’t work for a while, we can start turning you into someone. Now I’m wondering here, this name of yours, Byron, I really like that. Do you have a great knowledge of the poet’s work? Or maybe did your mother read some of his verse while she was pregnant, which is why she gave you the name?’

  Brendan said it wasn’t his name at all, but Tyrone said well, that was hardly the point, it had a great ring to it, it was a lot more memorable than Brendan and the Fitz must go as well. ‘This is make-believe town, Byron, and we don’t have too much time for the truth. Not when we’re working anyway.’

  Brendan sighed and said well, yes sure, his mother had always been a great admirer of Byron, and that his younger brother was called Childe Harolde. This was entirely wasted on his audience.

  Next day Tyrone and Hilton took him down to the studios. Theatrical was near RKO on Melrose. Hilton insisted they made a detour to show him Goldwyn on Santa Monica, and stopped the car so he could get a really good view of the Hollywood sign.

  Brendan was disappointed in the studios. He had somehow expected, against all logic he knew, a cross between the New York Opera House and the set for Atlanta with a yellow brick road snaking through it somewhere, and Lana Turner and Joan Crawford wafting about in white fox wraps; not an endless stretch of huge windowless buildings interspersed with smaller ones, and perfectly ordinary-looking people walking about apparently doing perfectly ordinary things. Later, as Tyrone took him on a lightning tour of some of the lots, and he walked from a nineteenth-century street into a medieval market place, and thence into a contemporary courtroom, he felt oddly comforted.

  ‘Byron, this is Yolande duGrath. Yolande, Byron. Byron Patrick. Hilton said to knock Byron into shape for his test. OK?’

  Yolande duGrath was head drama coach at Theatrical Studios; she was sixtyish, tiny, sliver-thin, with a Louise Brooke style, bright red bob, and huge brown eyes with long black, very fake eyelashes. She was vital and expansive, and she had a smile that made arc lights unnecessary. She had once been an actress herself, but had discovered she liked teaching others better; she had never married, but was rumoured to have had love affairs with most of the great stars. There was no one she did not know: she had been a guest at Pickfair, dined with Garbo, sailed with Errol Flynn. Cary Grant took her regularly to tea in the Polo Lounge; Clark Gable had been one of her dearest friends. She was perhaps most famous for her definition of the quality that separated the actors from the stars: it was larceny. ‘Larceny is sexual,’ she would say, ‘larceny is “hey who is this?” Larceny is up to mischief. It’s the first quality I look for when I’m given someone new.’ Betty Bacall, she was much quoted as saying, was larceny on legs.

  Brendan took one look at her and loved her.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘yes, I heard about you. You’re the pin-up from New York. We had another like you, not so long ago. He did OK. Tony Curtis, you heard of him I dare say?’

  Brendan said yes, he had heard of him.

  ‘OK. Let’s have a look at you. Tyrone, honey, you can just get lost. I’ll let you know when I’m through.’

  Tyrone left the theatre reluctantly.

  Yolande sat down on the edge of her stage and patted the place beside her. ‘Come and sit down. We can talk for a bit. Did they tell you why you were here?’

  ‘Here in Hollywood, or here in your theatre?’

  ‘In my theatre. You know why you’re in Hollywood. Whether you stay or not is up to you.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘It is. Well, to an extent. If you have what it takes in other departments that is. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. But if you do, then all you need is will. It’s perfectly simple. You’ve got to want to succeed so much that nothing else matters. Nothing and nobody. You’ll have to think dirty and act dirty, and not give a damn when people do dirty to you. This is a tough town to be in and you need to be tough. It’s also very phoney. It’s full of tinsel and beneath the tinsel there’s more tinsel. You have to see that, and not let it destroy you.’

  ‘Do you give this little lecture to everyone?’ asked Brendan.

  ‘No,’ said Yolande briefly. ‘Only the ones I like. The other thing is that Theatrical is a very quixotic studio. All the studios in this town follow the style of their chief execut
ive. At Columbia everybody talks dirty, because Harry Cohn talks dirty. At Warners they’re all mean, because Jack Warner’s mean. Dick Maynard who rules over us is temperamental and difficult, so everyone tries to be more temperamental and difficult than the next man. Except for me. So you aren’t in with an easy deal. I really think you should know that.’ She smiled at him. ‘Now then. Let’s see your pictures. Oh, yes, yes, that’s good. I like that. You could just about have it. Just.’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘A quality.’

  ‘What sort of quality?’

  ‘Hard to describe. What’s your real name?’

  ‘Brendan. Brendan FitzPatrick.’

  ‘Well, Byron is certainly better. Not good, but better.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Brendan sounded nettled.

  She smiled at him, her great brown eyes dancing. ‘Darling, you have to learn to take a lot of shit here. That was nothing. That was a rabbit turd. Wait till the horse manure descends. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Brendan.

  ‘Now, they’re testing you in a couple of days. Just a perfectly basic test. No real acting. They don’t have any particular role to test you in.’

  ‘No acting? So what do I do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. It isn’t hard. It’s the way you do it that matters. They’ll tell you to walk into a room. Look to the left, look to the right, show off the profile. Well at least that’s OK. Then they may ask you to start talking. Say your name and so on. It’s all to see how you react with the camera. The one thing you must not do, Byron, is try and be like another actor. Just do what they ask. If you’ve got what they’re looking for, they’ll see it, and if you haven’t you can’t fake it. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Brendan again.

  ‘Now then, let’s see a little acting. Go get on that stage and tell me you love me.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Brendan, laughing. He climbed up on to the stage, walked to the front and said, ‘Miss duGrath, I love you.’

  ‘No, not like that, not charmingly, not socially. You love me carnally. Let’s have that.’

  ‘OK. Miss duGrath, I love you. I really love you. I’m obsessed with you.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Now tell me you loathe me.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Miss duGrath, I loathe you. Utterly utterly loathe you.’ Brendan was beginning to enjoy himself.

  ‘And now you’re scared shitless of me.’

  ‘There’s something about you, Miss duGrath, that frightens me.’

  ‘Not so bad. Let’s see how you move. Walk off, walk on, sit down, stand around. OK. Off you go.’

  Later, when Brendan had gone off with Tyrone, she went into the tiny office she had backstage and picked up the phone. ‘I’ve seen your boy,’ she said. ‘He looks quite good, but I’m not so sure about the acting.’

  Nor were the talent agents. They put him through more than just saying his name and showing the profile: they gave him some lines from a love scene. Brendan felt as if he had never acted in his life, standing there on the tiny set, the lights hammering down on him, saying he had never felt this way before. When they looked at the test, it looked as if he had never acted in his life.

  After he had been in Hollywood for two and a half weeks, he did get a part. It was a waiter in a nightclub, and he had to say ‘Martini or bourbon?’ The scene took three days to get right, and Brendan thought he had never been so bored in his life. A week after that he got a walk-on in a musical, and then a bit part in a Chandler-style thriller. Tyrone was working hard on him, sending endless publicity stills and releases to the magazines, bombarding Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper’s offices with phone calls (all unreturned) and making him run the gamut of set-up incidents in restaurants and nightclubs. Twice he brought him into Romanoff’s with a starlet, early in the evening, when it was only half full, set them both down at a table, mussed it up a bit, put down a half-empty bottle of wine and two glasses in their hands, took a few shots and then hustled them out of a side door. They didn’t even have time to drink the wine. He wrote a caption, saying here was Theatrical’s hottest new property Byron Patrick, fresh from the New York stage, dining with Tina Tyrell, newly signed with RKO. Tyrone, who knew his stuff, had managed to get one shot with Romanoff himself standing behind the table. Brendan was astonished by this performance, but Yolande told him it happened all the time.

  ‘They do it with the big stars too. Half those pictures in the fan magazines of them all drinking champagne with each other are faked; they work too hard and get up too early to nightclub. Mostly they just go home and go to bed. But that makes boring reading. So they do these set-up jobs. Even Louella and Hedda are fooled by some of them. These are good shots, darling, let’s hope someone uses them.’ They didn’t.

  For two weeks after that Brendan didn’t work at all; then he got another waiter part, and the week after that Hilton, who had come back across from New York to see how things were shaping up, came into his room at the Chateau and told him his contract was not being renewed, and that he had to move out. ‘Maynard says we’ve wasted enough money on you. I told him I agreed. He’s fired Tyrone as well. So that’s it. You’ve shot your bolt, Byron. Best get on the other side of the door.’

  Brendan had been expecting this all along, but it was still a shock. He sat down on the bed. ‘So what happens next?’

  ‘Not a lot. You can either stay here, or go back to New York.’ Hilton looked at him coldly; he had backed a loser and he was anxious not to expend any further time or emotion on him, to dissociate himself from him as soon as possible.

  That was the good news from Brendan’s point of view; the rest was bad. He thought quickly. Returning to New York would be painful. Kathleen would be ashamed, Fleur would be disappointed. There was enough money for a few weeks, in both places. He had conserved his assets carefully. If he stayed in Hollywood he at least had a chance; he was getting to know his way around, he had made a few contacts, there were plenty of other agents in town and there were the cattle calls every day. There was no need to starve.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ said Hilton. ‘Pack up those clothes we bought you, will you?’

  Brendan stared at him. Then he pulled the suitcase they had also bought him from the closet and jammed all the clothes and shoes he had brought to Hollywood into it.

  ‘Cigarette case,’ said Hilton. ‘And lighter.’

  Brendan threw them in. ‘Would you like a pint of blood?’ he asked.

  Hilton walked out of the door without another word. Watching him get into the car outside and then checking out of the Chateau Marmont later himself, Brendan felt more cheerful than he had for weeks.

  Interview with Edna Desmond, Brendan’s eldest sister, for Young Lions chapter of The Tinsel Underneath.

  It was so truly terrible when Brendan was sent to England in the war. I don’t think our mother slept properly until he came home again. I don’t think any of us did. We all missed him so. Oh, of course he was spoilt, indulged, but he was such a light in the house. A day without Brendan was duller, longer. And we were so afraid, afraid something would happen to him. We lit candles for him, every Sunday, every Friday; maybe it helped. He survived a lot. ‘He is one of God’s favourites,’ said Mother one night, as we waited to hear, after he had been taken prisoner. ‘God will take care of him.’ I think we honestly thought he was that important, that God would keep a special watch for him. Well, maybe He did. And then he came home, so much older and more serious, hardened, toughened, bringing Fleur with him. Well, that was hard for our mother to cope with. Hard for all of us, but more for her. She was shocked, at first, and ashamed of him. Then she got to understand and she forgave him, but I don’t think we ever felt quite the same. She was so good to Fleur: a mother. We all got to love Fleur of course; she was easy to love in those days. A pretty, sparky little thing, very bright and sw
eet. Although even when she was tiny, she was tough. Brave and – what can I say – kept everyone, except her father, at arm’s length. It was as if she didn’t quite trust us.

  Oh, but she loved him so. It was a love affair. They were all the world to one another. If she could be with Brendan, she certainly didn’t want to be anywhere else. Not playing, not at a party even. And he was a bit the same. He never really had any serious girlfriends. If anything looked like it was getting serious, Fleur saw it off. I’m not joking.

  I never shall forget the day he left to go to Hollywood. It makes me cry still, just thinking about it. That child just broke her heart. We all saw him to the airport, and she sat there, quite silent in the car, white-faced, her eyes huge, clinging on to his hand. And when it was time to say goodbye, she had to be prised off him. It took two of us to drag her free. She wasn’t screaming, just sobbing, terrible, grievous sobs. ‘I love you, Daddy, I love you,’ that was all she said, over and over. She knew she couldn’t go with him, she’d accepted that, but she just couldn’t stand the pain. It was an awful thing to see.

  When he’d gone, finally, and I shall never forget, the front of his shirt was just drenched with her tears, she just stood there, staring at the barrier, at where he had gone, quite motionless, for a long time. And finally she agreed to come, and she walked alone, she wouldn’t take our hands, very slowly, her little head held high, in front of us. And when we got home she went upstairs to her room, and wouldn’t come out for, oh, twelve hours.