“Where are you going?”
“I can’t say, princess.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I’m not sure, it depends how long my business takes.”
There were a dozen more questions that I could have asked but I knew I would get the same vague response so I let it slide.
“Can you drive?”
“It’s been a while, the last time was in Havana.”
“It’s a two speed automatic, it’s not that hard.”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
“I’m giving you the car. I’ll be...elsewhere...so I won’t need it.”
“That’s insane.”
“No, it makes sense. I also want you to get yourself a better place to live. You can’t live in a motel anymore, not now you’re going to be a movie star.”
“I’m a glorified extra. I got the job because some movie producer owes you a favour. Let’s not get carried away.”
“This is a town where impressions are very important. Believe me, you have to find someplace else to live.” He gave me a business card, a realtor in Santa Monica. “Give her a call. Tell her you’re a friend of mine.”
“Do you know everyone in the world?”
“Not yet but I’m working on it.”
“Any other orders you want to give me before you get on the plane?”
The irony was lost on him. He thought about it. “No, that just about covers it,” he said.
“So let me break this down: You’ve called in a favour to get me a small part in a movie, now you’re giving me your car to drive while you’re gone - and you don’t know for how long - and you want me to get another apartment. Is that it?”
“You got a problem with that?”
I didn’t smile back. “This is just like Angel.”
“Only Angel did it so he could sleep with you. Me, I haven’t even decided if I want to.”
“Sure you do,” I said, baiting him.
“Don’t get me wrong. You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my whole life, but love is dangerous, princess. So no, I’m not sure if I want to sleep with you. There’s a lot of women easier than Magdalena Fuentes for a guy like me.”
“So what is this about?”
“It’s about you taking good care of my car,” he said. “I just got you a screen test in a big picture. You owe me a favour.”
When we got to the airport, he parked the Roadster in front of departures and tossed me the car keys. Then he walked around the car, opened the door, and took my hand to help me out. He pulled me towards him and kissed me. It wasn’t decorous, he squeezed the life out of me and the kiss went on and on and nearly took my breath away. I’d only ever been kissed like that once before and that was in Havana, and that was by him, the night he’d saved me from Batista’s secret police.
He finally pulled away and took my face in his hands. “Don’t dent the car.”
“Reyes, I’ve never stopped thinking about you, every day for four years.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“I mean it. One day I’ll prove it to you.”
“Will you?”
“You will come back in one piece?”
“I always have before.”
He turned away, took two bags from the back seat and headed towards the terminal. He stopped and looked back. “Be good,” he said. “I’ll be back in time for Christmas.”
And then he was gone.
Chapter 20
The next day I read in the paper that a Flying Tiger Super Constellation chartered by the US Military headed for South Vietnam with over a hundred people on board had disappeared over the Western Pacific. No wreckage or bodies had been found. It had taken off from Travis air base, an hour’s flight north of LA.
My hands shook, I felt sick. I didn’t know if Reyes was on board, and I had no way of finding out. There was no one I knew who seemed to know anything about him or his life. All I could do was wait.
We sat on the sound stage of the half-finished set. The cast and crew were talking and smoking, they looked relaxed, they had all made movies before. I was the only virgin. I pretended to read my script and not look as overawed as I felt.
There were two empty chairs. I looked at my watch, the dress rehearsal was supposed to start at ten o’clock. I could feel myself sweating under the hot lights and I hoped my make-up wouldn’t run. I guessed we’d get started soon.
Two hours later Marilyn walked in.
She was wearing dark glasses. She looked like a woman who’d just been beaten up by her husband and had a few drinks to try and get over the fight. Her figure-hugging sheath of a dress still made her look ravishing, and her hair was like a halo of platinum light. No one could take their eyes off her.
Everyone stopped talking and stared. She stopped and conferred with her acting coach, a quick and whispered consultation. For a moment I thought she was going to turn and go back to her dressing room, but her assistant’s grip on her arm was like a vice.
Frank Sinatra walked onto the set, he looked angry. “Are we starting on this fucking thing, now?” he said.
I stood up to take my place, and it hit me I was on a sound stage with Monroe and Sinatra. I felt as awe struck as if I was standing on the sidewalk outside the Academy on Oscar night.
Wilder clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone, we’re ready.”
Marilyn looked as terrified as I felt. Her coach gave her a reassuring smile and stepped to the wings.
We were ready to start.
They had been shooting for two weeks, and this was my first day on the set. It was literally like walking in halfway through a movie, it was obvious things had not been going well. Everyone seemed nervous.
But I knew my scene--there were only a couple of lines.
“We’ll have one run-through and then try it on camera,” Wilder suggested. He turned and shouted, “Extras in place! Let’s get going!”
I watched them set the boom and pull the cameras into place. The lights flooded the set, and the slate was snapped in front of our faces. Sinatra was glaring at Marilyn who looked as if she was ready to run for the exit.
I had been worried that I would forget my two lines. I didn’t. I just couldn’t get them right. My big line was: “I’ve never been to Paris, but I have an aunt in Poughkeepsie.” In the context of the movie it was a running gag and it was supposed to be funny. But I couldn’t say Poughkeepsie. I was so nervous I kept stumbling over it.
Wilder had someone fetch me a glass of water. Marilyn’s acting coach had me doing breathing exercises. After the sixth take, the director called for a break.
I felt shattered. Who did I think I was? I had no acting experience and there I was, with two of the biggest stars in the world, a complete amateur and I was wasting everyone’s time.
I forced myself to return to my place on the set. I stood under the lights, trembling, while the girl patched my makeup. The slate snapped—Take Three. I fluffed the line again and the cameras stopped. Take Four. Another fluff.
Sinatra looked at me as if I was something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe and stalked off to his trailer with his entourage in tow. Marilyn took me aside and I braced myself for a tongue-lashing. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “You’re just nervous.”
I started running off at the mouth: “I have no experience, I only got this job because I know someone.”
“You’re talking about my entire career,” she said. “Come with me, I’ll give you something to help you relax.”
She took me back to her trailer. There were clothes strewn carelessly all over the floor, and pill bottles, full and empty, on every surface, along with empty bottles of champagne. There were two red roses in a vase in front of the mirror.
She shook out two red pills from one of the bottles and handed them to me with a glass of water. “Here,” she said. “I couldn’t get through a day without a couple of these.”
I did as she said and took them. I
didn’t even ask her what they were.
This was surreal. “What beautiful flowers,” I said.
“They’re from Bobby.”
“Is that your boyfriend?”
“He’s Jack’s brother.”
“Jack?”
She didn’t seem to hear me. She kicked off her shoes and lay down on the sofa with a glass of champagne. Her acting coach was banging on the door asking her if she was all right. Marilyn ignored her.
“Guess I’m the only girl in Hollywood gets her flowers delivered by the Secret Service. Lucky girl, huh?”
“Is he in love with you?”
“Love? Phooey. He’s not interested in me, none of them are. He just wants to sleep with Marilyn Monroe.” She poured another glass of champagne. “What made you get into this business?”
“I’ve always wanted to be an actress.”
She looked at me, waiting for me to finish the sentence. I realized I had never thought hard enough about what lay beyond the dream.
“It always seemed so glamorous,” I said.
She looked around at the mess of bottles and clothes and raised her glass and smiled. Paula Strasberg was still hammering on the door.
“Do you want me to let her in?” I said.
Marilyn shook her head.
“Why did you become an actress, Miss Monroe?”
“I thought it would make people love me,” she said. “But it doesn’t last, it never does. Even if the whole world loves you, it still isn’t enough because you know tomorrow They’re going to love someone else. They make you think you’re special--that’s the trouble--but no one over thirty-five is ever special. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“The world is going to come flocking, honey. You’ll be fighting them off with bats. How many times you been married?”
“I haven’t.”
“Good for you. Marriage is for suckers.”
Paula Strasberg was shouting at the director: “Someone must have a key! I think she’s taken too many of those goddamned pills again. What do you mean you don’t have the key to her trailer? Someone must have a key!”
“Soon they’ll stop looking at me and start looking at you, or someone like you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man. Look at Frank--they’ll always love Frank because he can sing. Finding something that’s going to last, that’s the hard part.”
“Marilyn, it’s Paula. Open the door!”
“You’re young and you’re beautiful and you want to be a star. Me, I’m a star and I want to be young and beautiful. They’re all going to leave me soon, as soon as I can’t hide what’s under the make-up. You get that, don’t you?”
Then another voice: “Five minutes, Miss Monroe!”
She got up and stood behind me, her hands on my shoulders. We both looked in the mirror. She stroked my cheek. “If you want to find something that lasts,” she said. “don’t look in Hollywood. The people you love always leave you. That’s the only truth there is.”
Later that day I watched the rushes with the rest of the cast, sat through the embarrassing out takes with my hands over my eyes, but then there was the final one, the seventh. I didn’t recognize myself. It was just a few lines but something else happened. “She was right, the camera loves you,” Wilder said, and that was it.
Chapter 21
It was a day’s work and that was it, my first role, my first credit.
The next day my new agent called to tell me I had an audition at Warner Brothers. I got three more small roles in as many months.
I only saw Marilyn once more, and that was on television, when she flew to the East Coast to sing “Happy Birthday, Mister President” at Madison Square Garden. Knowing what I knew, it was an eerie moment. Peter Lawford introduced her, and of course Marilyn was high and couldn’t find the right entrance and didn’t get onstage until her third cue.
“Ladies and gentleman,” Lawford said, “the late Marilyn Monroe.”
The audience thought it was really funny. Apparently Jackie didn’t see the joke, and neither did anyone else three months later when she was found dead in her Brentwood home.
It was all everyone talked about in Hollywood for weeks; they said she died of an overdose. I thought about that sad face in the mirror. “If you want to find something that lasts, don’t look in Hollywood.”
So if things continued to go my way, and I live the dream, like she did, what then? What if I reached for the moon and my hand came down empty?
A Hot Day in Winter was rushed through for release in October, and it attracted a lot of attention because it was Marilyn’s last film. I got a lot of attention too, even though my role was a cameo. A reviewer gave me the nickname “Madeleine Monroe,” and suddenly the trade papers were calling me a starlet. I even got excellent notices from one of the New York Times” leading film critics: “Madeleine Montes shows great promise. Her cameo as Sinatra’s goofy former girlfriend is a gem.”
I moved into a new apartment in West Hollywood near Beverley Hills. I was on my way. Nothing was going to stop me now. I couldn’t stop thinking about Reyes, and I never gave up hope.
Then one day the agent Reyes had found for me handed me a postcard that had arrived for me at his office. There was a picture of a pagoda and a postmark from some place I’d never heard of. There were five words on the back: Don’t dent the car. R.
The Formosa near Santa Monica and La Brea wasn’t much from the outside and not that much better on the inside. It had a black and white metal awning and a logo that looked like Chinese chopsticks. But the celebrity clientele didn’t go there for the chicken chow mein but for the convenience; it was right across the road from Warner Studios.
When I walked in, Sinatra was having lunch with a couple of Warner executives. He even acknowledged me with the faintest of smiles as I walked past.
“Nice car,” he said.
“Thanks.”
My agent, Ted Levine, was waiting for me in one of the red leather booths, dimly lit with red-tasselled Chinese lanterns. “Do you want lunch?” he said.
“I’ve eaten.”
“Great, because the food here is not good.” He ordered himself a whisky sour and a mojito for me.
“I got some good news, Maddy.” he said.
I hated him calling me that. I even flirted with the idea of calling him “Teddy.”
“I got you an audition for a movie called Wings of Eagles.”
“A war movie?”
“It’s going to star Steve McQueen. You’ve heard of him, right? He’s going to be the next big thing. And you’re not just getting a few lines. This is a supporting role.”
I tried not to look too impressed; it was the one thing Reyes had taught me about Hollywood: no matter what anyone said, always make a face like you were being cheated at poker.
“You think I should take it?”
Ted shook his head. “Jesus H. Christ, I got a hundred actresses who would die for this part.”
“So you think I should take it.”
“I think, you get this role, get some good reviews, I can make you a big time star, Maddy.”
I made a face like he was cheating me at poker.
“I mean it.”
“Let’s get the part first, Teddy.” He raised his whisky sour in a toast and I smiled but I didn’t pick up my own glass. I needed a drink but I could feel my hands trembling under the table and I knew I would spill it over my new André Courrèges skirt.
It was all happening so fast. My dreams were coming true, it was so close I could almost smell it.
Metro’s studios were over in Culver City, and this was where Levine had arranged for me to meet with John Huston and the movie’s producer, Artie Ranzen.
Ted didn’t seem to know much about the script, but I’d seen McQueen in The Magnificent Seven, and he had a lot of sex appeal. So I figured they were looking for a woman with the same attributes and I dressed the part; a mini skirt, a low blouse and Mary Quant boots.
When
they saw me, Huston stared at me open-mouthed; Ranzen put his head in his hands. Clearly something was wrong and I hadn’t even read a word for them.
Huston gave me a page of the script, and I was so unnerved by their reaction I made a hash of it. When I’d finished the reading, Huston leaned forward and said: “You do know, Miss Montes, that you’re going to be playing a nun?”
I tugged at the neck of my blouse, but once men have seen your breasts, covering them up again doesn’t win you back lost ground. “I guess it’s good I didn’t wear my suspenders,” I said.
Huston grimaced. “Your agent didn’t tell you?”
But I must have done something right. They called me back for a screen test. I got the part.
Ted Levine’s house was perched high in the Hollywood Hills. It was vast and it was tasteless, a sprawling statement in glass and concrete, all sharp angles and stunning views. The garden was mostly sterile rock, so there were no Filipino gardeners watering grass or raking leaves when I arrived.
I tried not to appear awestruck as I walked in. Even though I was on my fourth picture, I still felt intimidated rubbing shoulders with Warren Beatty and Robert Mitchum, or standing by the pool bar with Montgomery Clift.
Natalie Wood and Kim Novak were dancing by the pool to a Chubby Checker song. Then someone started singing “Things.” It was Bobby Darin himself; he’d found a microphone and was singing over the top of his own recording. Sammy Davis Junior put an arm around his shoulder and joined in.
The party had been going for a few hours and it was already starting to get a little wild; half a dozen girls had peeled off their bikinis and were squealing naked in the Jacuzzi. When I went to the bathroom I found a B list actor doing lines of cocaine on the marble washstand. Part of me got a thrill out of it; another part, the one that was brought up a good Catholic and wore a mantilla veil to Mass at the San Cristobal, was scared and shocked.
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