The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  Ben feels Sister Jean’s fingers lightly touch the back of his neck. So she’s not comfortable with the story either, he thinks.

  “Well,” Rosie says, grinning. “Guess what, Flo? Here you are, back in front of the cameras again!”

  The audience applauds wildly. Flo gazes out at them with effusive astonishment, as if each time they applaud she needs to be reconvinced that it’s real.

  Rosie stands suddenly. “All right, now, Flo. Are you ready for what we practiced?”

  She laughs. “I suppose so.”

  “What is this?” Jameson Collins whispers to Ben. “What are they doing?”

  “Just watch,” Ben tells him.

  Rosie’s telling the audience, “Flo was once known as Baby Flo, the Child Wonder Whistler. She’s also a big fan of the Spice Girls. So, in honor of the fact that they’re both on my show today, Flo and I will do our rendition of ‘Wannabe’—you know: ‘Tell me what you want, what you really really want’ and all that.”

  Collins mutters in disbelief, “This has now left the realm of possibility.”

  Rosie helps Flo stand and they take a few steps toward the center of the stage. “Ready, Flo?” she asks.

  “Ready,” the old woman tells her.

  And they’re off. Flo pulls her old lips together and begins whistling the tune to the Spice Girls’ Top 40 hit. Rosie whistles along with her, but Flo’s just as loud, just as forceful and vibrant as the much younger woman. Their microphones pick up the sound clearly, sending it all through the studio. The audience goes crazy. By the end of the tune, the whistling is drowned out by a raucous standing ovation.

  “You are one amazing lady, Flahrence Lahrence,” Rosie shouts over the thundering applause. “I want to thank you very, very much for the honor of your being here today. You are my inspiration! If I’m half as good as you are when I’m fifty, I’ll be happy!”

  The audience stamps its feet, cheering for Flo.

  “Okay,” Rosie’s calling, “stick around. We’ll be back with Dennis Rodman, bein’ bad, and the Spice Girls, bein’… well, spicy!”

  She hands Flo one of her trademark koosh toys and Flo slingshots it into the audience.

  The music comes up. Fade to a commercial.

  “Hey,” Jameson Collins says, a mite ruffled, “she never called on me.”

  The audience stays on its feet cheering as Flo is helped off the stage. Ben turns around to Sister Jean.

  “That wasn’t so bad, huh?” he says to her. “They really loved her!”

  “One more condition,” she says softly to him. “No more questions about the fire.”

  But Ben doesn’t make any more promises.

  He knows that, sooner or later, he may have to start breaking them.

  “That’s it. Easy now,” says the foreman.

  Richard watches as the coffin is gingerly lifted from the earth. It’s in pretty bad shape, a grayish-blue oblong rotted through at one end. From the sides of the hole, tree roots dangle like lifeless limbs. A smell like old fruit rises from the moist soil.

  “Easy, easy,” the foreman commands again. “We don’t want nothin’ breakin’ apart here.” Five men ease the muddy, stinking thing into the waiting van. They’ll carry it off through the streets of Los Angeles to their lab, to discover … what?

  Richard’s watched the whole process without speaking. Rex is with him. A couple of times Rex has had to go off by himself, wandering through the pretty, daisy-dotted, tree-shaded cemetery. “Richard,” he’s cajoled. “It’s just too creepy to stand here and watch.” But Richard hasn’t moved from his spot.

  The gravesite is covered by a large olive-colored tent, the cemetery having closed its gates for the morning. The gravediggers have done their work quickly and efficiently. A line of curious spectators has gathered out on the street, their faces pressed through the rungs of the iron fence. They’ll be let in now, to gawk at the wound left in the earth where a body buried as Florence Lawrence once lay.

  Rex crosses his arms across his chest and shivers. “This is just totally freaky,” he says.

  They’d arrived in L.A. the day before. Flying into LAX, they’d both noticed the heavy blanket of smog that had settled over the sprawling city. They picked up their rental car and headed up La Cienega Boulevard. “You know,” Rex quipped, “they used to say God felt sorry for actors, so he created Hollywood to give them a place in the sun and a swimming pool.” He looks out the window into the gray air. “Well, at least they’ve still got their pools.”

  They had reservations to stay in the cleaner air of West Hollywood, at the lush and leafy San Vicente Inn. But first they decided to take a detour through Hollywood proper, down Hollywood Boulevard past Mann’s Chinese Theater. Rex shuddered at the kitsch, the fast food joints, and the drug addicts loitering along the Walk of Fame.

  “Mary Pickford once observed,” he said, “on one of her last drives along this strip, ‘What a tawdry monument we’ve left behind.’” He looked over at Richard behind the wheel. “I wonder what it was like before all this—back in the days when the orange groves were still a part of the scene, when Gloria Swanson and Mabel Normand and the Keystone bathing beauties rode the trolley down to the beach.”

  “We can only imagine,” Richard said.

  They drove up to Sunset. “You know,” Rex said, continuing his sad tour, “the Norma Desmond house wasn’t really on this street. It was on the corner of Wilshire and Irving. Belonged to J. Paul Getty.”

  “Really?” Richard asked. He loved Sunset Boulevard, both film and play. “Let’s go see the house.”

  “Can’t,” Rex said. “Torn down to make way for an office building.”

  Richard sighed. “Isn’t there anything left to see?”

  “There.” Rex pointed to a nondescript storefront, just down from the giant Tower Records. “The Viper Room. River Phoenix died right there on the sidewalk.”

  Tawdry monument, indeed, Richard thought.

  Richard has sensed his lover’s melancholia ever since they arrived. “Can we leave yet?” Rex asks now, still clearly disturbed by the exhumation. The workers are still securing the coffin in the van. “I want to get out to Highways to go over logistics for the show.”

  “Just wait until they’re gone, okay, Nooker?”

  He keeps his eye on the van, now being locked shut. He feels some kind of strange responsibility for the corpse—whoever it is. Or was.

  Just a girl.

  “Look,” Rex says, pulling Richard’s sleeve to distract him from the van’s progress out of the cemetery. “Over there’s Marion Davies’s crypt. You want to go see? Next to it is Tyrone Power’s really foofy grave. He was a closeted queen, you know.”

  Richard nods, but he keeps his eyes on the van as it drives through the gate and turns right onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

  The cemetery is a quiet, tranquil place. Not as large as the more famous Forest Lawn, but most of Hollywood’s pioneers are here. Davies. The Talmadge sisters. Cecil B. DeMille. Douglas Fairbanks, in the middle of a lotus-dotted lake. Rudolph Valentino, in a locked crypt to keep out his more fanatic followers. And Florence Lawrence, off to the side, near the far wall.

  “Mr. Sheehan?”

  They look up. A man has approached them, Chinese, about sixty, a little plump. He smiles at them.

  “I’m Detective Philip Lee,” he says, extending his hand.

  “Richard Sheehan,” Richard says, shaking with him. “This is Rex Rousseau.”

  Detective Lee grasps Rex’s hand. “Come for the show, huh?”

  Rex shudders. “It’s not something I’ll soon forget.”

  Lee smiles. “When you’ve seen as many exhumations as I have, they all look alike. Except, of course, when the coffin breaks in two and they bring the guy up a piece at a time.”

  “Oh, dear,” Rex says, and he sits down on the grass.

  Lee turns his gaze back to Richard. “They told me you were the writer of the original article. That you actually talked with th
is old lady who’s all over the news. Did you see her on Rosie?”

  “Yes,” Richard tells him. “She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?”

  Her appearance had caused a sensation. She had been funny, sharp, and wise—even if she hadn’t looked anything like herself. Where was the caftan? Richard thought. Where were the cigarettes? But America had fallen in love with The Biograph Girl all over again.

  Detective Lee scratches the top of his head. “Well, you know, my mother’s ninety-nine herself,” he tells Richard. “She still walks to the market every day. Does all her own cooking.”

  “Guess the average life expectancy is going up right before our eyes, huh?”

  Lee shrugs. “Me, I’ll probably drop dead tomorrow. Too many hamburgers and ice cream floats. Tell me, do you think she’s a murderer?”

  Richard blinks. “You mean, Flo?”

  “Sure didn’t mean my mother,” the detective says, laughing.

  “No, sir,” Richard says. “I do not.”

  “But you’ve been talking with these L.A. Times reporters. You’ve spoken with my department at the L.A.P.D.”

  Richard nods. “That doesn’t mean I think she’s guilty of murder.” He narrows his eyes at the detective. “But I guess you must have enough suspicions yourself that the department pressed to have the grave opened.”

  Lee sighs. “We know somebody was buried there. It’s not like they found just soil and earthworms this morning.” He stretches. “Me, I want to be cremated. Can’t stand the thought of maggots eating through my cheekbones.”

  Rex makes a little sound from the grass behind them.

  “Anyway,” Lee continues. “So the question is, whose body is it? We need to try and make some sort of identification. I don’t know if the old lady had anything to do with it or not. But some kind of hoax was pulled over on the coroner’s office, if what this old dame says is true.” He smiles. “And there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

  “You have no reason to think a murder was committed,” Richard says.

  Lee’s smile fades. “We have reason to think a woman died who’s not been identified—who was, in fact, actually misidentified as somebody else. And that somebody else admits it was just what she wanted, because she wanted the hell out of town.”

  “So what are you hoping from the exhumation?” Richard asks.

  “The same thing you are. Hoping it’ll prove whether or not the old lady is who she says she is.”

  Richard laughs. “But we have no DNA sample of Florence Lawrence to compare the remains to,” Richard says. “I’ve tried to hunt down a blood relative. I can’t find any. She had a brother, but he doesn’t appear to have had any children. If there were some relatives, you’d think they would have come forward by now, given all the publicity.”

  “Well,” Lee says, “at the very least we’ll learn if the body in that casket was a woman, if it was white, and if it was about fifty years old at time of death. And if it doesn’t fit all those things—”

  “Then it’s not Florence Lawrence,” Richard finishes.

  “Bingo.” Lee closes his eyes and lifts his face toward the midmorning sun. “Gonna be a scorcher, I think. Can feel it in the air already.” He looks back at Richard. “I’ve gone over what our records have on missing persons reported for 1938 and 1939. Granted, it’s pretty sketchy, but there are a number of girls their families never saw again. None for that particular month, December, but a bunch in the spring. Could have been it took that long for the families to notice. Hollywood was in its heyday then, you know.”

  Richard feels the tingle at the top of his head, the pulse of a story heating up. “Maybe I can get that list from you?” he asks. “Maybe I can help you in your investigation.”

  “Here’s my card.” Lee hands Richard a small rectangle with his name, division, and phone extension. “Give me a call. In the meantime,” he adds, looking around at Rex on the grass, “enjoy the rest of your stay. No graverobbing, you hear?”

  He moves off. They watch him without saying anything. The tent is now being taken down, the yawning hole in the earth covered with tarp.

  “Richard,” Rex says softly, “I don’t feel so good.”

  Richard looks down at his lover. He’s pale and his lips are a little blue. “What’s wrong, Nooker?” he asks, sitting down next to him on the grass.

  “Maybe just jet lag. I need to rest.” Rex smiles. “It’ll pass.”

  Richard stares at him. He doesn’t like it when Rex feels sick. It happens far less frequently than in the old days, but Richard still gets freaked out every time it happens. He can’t help but always fear it’s something worse than what Rex says it is—worse than jet lag or a cold or too much hot sauce on his tofu pup.

  Richard runs his fingers down the side of his lover’s face. Rex closes his eyes and turns up to the sun. Richard watches him carefully. He looks strong. Healthy. There’s color in his cheeks. He looks fit.

  Doesn’t he?

  Rex opens his eyes. “Hey,” he says quietly. “Over there. Do you see who that is?”

  Richard looks. He does see who it is. Roddy McDowall himself. He’s dressed in a natty tweed sport coat and bow tie, a floppy hat on his head.

  “Well, that cinches it,” Richard says. “He’s got to be the one who placed the marker on Florence Lawrence’s grave.”

  “Go over and talk with him, Richard,” Rex urges.

  “Don’t you want to come? You love him.”

  “No,” Rex defers. “You go. I’ll just wait here.”

  Richard touches his face again. “You really don’t feel well, Nooker, if you’d pass up a chance to meet him.”

  “I’m fine,” Rex insists. “Just tired. Go over there, Richard. Before he leaves.”

  “You sure?”

  “Go.” Rex smiles. “And get his autograph.”

  Richard hesitates for a second more, then stands, brushing off his khakis. He heads off across the lawn.

  The actor looks up, sees him approach. He extends his hand.

  “Ah, the reporter,” he says in his British—or was it Welsh?—accent.

  “Yes, sir,” Richard tells him, shaking his hand soundly. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  “Well, I had to come see what they’ve done to poor Flo,” Roddy says with a smile.

  “Did you know her?”

  The actor gives him a little smirk. “Oh, come now, my young friend. I’m not that old.”

  Richard blushes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Of course you didn’t,” the actor says. There’s a sparkle in his eyes that does indeed belie his years, making him seem ageless. “You see, I’m just an old movie buff myself. Tell me, do you think that’s really her up in Buffalo?”

  “I do think so, yes,” Richard says.

  “Hmm,” the actor says. “Fascinating.” He strokes his chin as if considering something. “But not anymore, even if so. Do you understand my drift?”

  “I’m not sure I do,” Richard admits.

  The actor sighs. His face is elfin, a sharp little nose with round, clever eyes. “Let me tell you a story,” he says. “I went to see Mary Pickford once. Oh, maybe ten years before she died. She was famously reclusive, you know. No one got in to see her. But I’d run in to her husband, Buddy Rogers, and told him I’d just love to tell Mary how marvelous I’d always thought she was. So one day, out of the blue, I got an invitation to come up to Pickfair. Well, it was like getting an audience with the Queen in Buckingham Palace. I dressed up as spiffily as I could, and I arrived with a whole spray of cala lilies and orchids for her. The maid greeted me at the door, took the flowers, and asked me to sit at a little table in the foyer. So I did. I sat there and waited and waited. A half hour went by. Forty-five minutes. Nothing. Finally the telephone on the table in front of me rang. Very shrill. Startled me out of my wits. The maid came in and told me to answer it. I thought, ‘How very strange.’ But I did anyway.”

  He pauses. “And it was Mary.�
��

  “Where was she?”

  “She was upstairs!” Roddy laughs. “She thanked me for the flowers, told me how kind it was for me to come visit her, and told me she would remember me in her prayers. Then she said good-bye and hung up!”

  “That was it?”

  “That was it! That was my visit with Little Mary at eighty.” He smiles at Richard. “Do you understand my drift now?”

  “I think so,” he said. “But Flo isn’t like that. She’s very accessible. She’s very down-to-earth. She doesn’t care about the image.”

  “You know, it’s never a good idea to take soft lights off tinsel. Ever see a Christmas tree during the day? How sad it seems? How lifeless?” Roddy sighs dramatically. “Even the Sphinx loses its mystery in the noonday sun.”

  “But Flo is more intriguing now than she was back then,” Richard tells him.

  “Maybe so. But if dear old Flo is still alive,” the actor tells him sagely, “she can hardly be The Biograph Girl anymore, can she?”

  Richard nods. “That’s what she said,” he says. “That once, a long time ago, she used to be Florence Lawrence.”

  Roddy grins. “Precisely. Because Florence Lawrence is … here.” He gestures around him.

  “You put the marker on her grave, didn’t you?” Richard asks.

  The actor chuckles, his hand held faintly over his heart. “You must understand, through all of this,” he says. “We live in a world of make-believe and illusion, but to Hollywood—to old Hollywood, that is, and to those of us who keep the candle lit in its memory—make-believe is the truth. For us, the truth is often quite different from what it is in the rest of the world. Our creatures live by different rules of logic and physics. They are ethereal, made of wisps of light and smoke and memory.”

  “But Flo’s hardly ethereal,” Richard tells him.

  “Of course she’s not,” he says. “But Florence Lawrence was—is.”

  He laughs. “Oh. You must think me mad. And perhaps I am, a little. We all are. Have to be, you know. But look around you. Can’t you feel it? There’s enchantment in places like this. In Rudy’s tomb. Out on the lake with Doug Fairbanks. Here one learns very quickly that ghosts are as real as you or me.”