[Celebrity Murder Case 04] - The Talking Pictures Murder Case

by George Baxt

  O'Neil lifted her chin and said with pride, “She was a magnificent woman and a wonderful friend We traveled everywhere together and I'm pleased I was able to bring some light into her somber life. And my dear, she used to make the most superb chopped liver.” O'Neil paused for a sip of tea. “Tell me, Ruth, are you happy with your contract with Paramount Pictures?”

  “Well actually, darling, they see me as some sort of grande dame. Little Mr. Zukor, a quaint old thing with the tongue of an adder, assures me that mine will be prestige pictures. Well, Clive Brook, who’s an old hand out here and proving to be more valuable talking than miming, tells me prestige picture means one that loses money but can be pointed to with pride when the censors accuse them of trying to pull the wool over their eyes with something salacious from Clara Bow. Anyway, that's not important. What matters is they're paying me a lot of money, which I sorely need, and at my age it’s a godsend.”

  O'Neil smiled “You never were one to fool yourself “

  “Hell no. I was prepared to do mothers, aunts, or high school principals for that kind of dough. I haven't had anything decent on Broadway in years and touring was beginning to wear me down. What really hurts is coming on the set as I did yesterday and among the small part players and extras were some familiar faces who used to command the best dressing rooms and my kind of salary. Oh hell, Nance, what does one do? Should I talk to them? Should I try to be friendly?”

  “Chatterton, keep your distance. If they hate your guts, you don't want to know about it. You didn't bring about their unfortunate circumstances. Sooner or later they'll realize that and adjust to their lot and make the best of it. Don't forget, girl, a couple of decades ago I was big stuff on the Great White Way. But …” She shrugged and they both laughed.

  In the club car of the Twentieth Century Limited, out of Chicago and bound for Los Angeles, Rita Gerber, a pert young actress in her early twenties, was advising her traveling companion, another young actress named Alicia Leddy, “Listen, baby, there's only one way never to grow old “

  ’What's that?” asked Alicia eagerly.

  “Die young.”

  “You mean like Dolly Lovelace? Brrr. I wouldn't want to die a suicide like she did. God in heaven, how could she have swallowed acid? What agony she must have suffered?”

  Rita looked around to make sure she wouldn't be overheard and then signaled Alicia to move forward on her chair “Listen, baby, I got this from the schmuck who directed my screen test He says she didn't commit suicide, she was murdered “

  “No kidding?”

  “Would I kid you?”

  A traveling salesman interrupted them, favoring the girls with a toothy grin “Excuse me,” he asked Rita Gerber, “haven't we met before?”

  “No,” snapped Rita, “I've never been in a train wreck “ He went away quietly “Anyway, this director has a pipeline to this Alexander Roland's secretary and he says that she says that he says—”

  “That's who signed me!”

  “Who?”

  “Alexander Roland “ When she smiled, Alicia Leddy looked like an amusement park Kewpie doll “He saw me a couple of months ago in Cutie Pie and liked me and he never forgot me “

  “Cutie Pie? I saw that. I don't remember you. What part did you play?”

  “I didn't have a real part I was in the chorus “

  “I see “ Her voice had gone flat “You must have done a pretty damned good test.”

  “I didn't do any test.”

  “Say, listen, baby, are you sure you're being brought out there to act?”

  Jack Darling watched with a mixture of fascination and distaste as Mephistopheles, Bertha Graze's calico cat, worried a baby mouse in a corner of the room Oblivious to the unimportant drama, Bertha popped a Fig Newton into her mouth and swiftly ground it to pulp and then said to the surprisingly sober young actor, “Why'd you come to me? You usually ridicule my predictions But then, you don't take anything seriously except your boozing “

  “Because you know the source of just about every rumor that springs up in this town Where did it start? Who began spreading it? Do you think Dolly was murdered?”

  Bertha washed down the remains of the Fig Newton with a swig of the nauseating California soft drink, Orange Julius. “It's possible There was no autopsy.”

  “How come?”

  “Her father wouldn't permit it. You haven't forgotten your former father-in-law, have you?”

  “He’s not easily forgotten. He didn't want Dolly to marry me. He did everything possible to talk her out of it.”

  “Maybe if you hadn't let your mother bulldoze you into divorcing the poor kid, she might still be alive today.”

  “Who told you that? Who told you Mama made me divorce her?”

  “You said it yourself, handsome. I'm the source of just about every rumor that springs up in this town Have a a bite of my Baby Ruth?” She was holding out a candy bar

  “No thanks.” He averted his eyes as she demolished the candy The cat was demolishing the mouse. Jack covered his mouth with his hand. Bertha was staring into her crystal ball.

  “My my, lookee what I've got here “ His eyes traveled back to her face. “Why, here's your mama and you know where she is, she is in Alex Roland's office and giving him what for.”

  “She’s in Pasadena visiting some old friends.”

  “So what? What I see in the ball is the future, that's what crystal balls are for.” She resumed studying her prop. “He's standing his ground like he always does. He's giving as good as he's getting. But your mama's gonna beat him down. You and Annamary and Willis are soon gonna be making a talker, each of you. The crystal ball never lies.”

  “How can it lie when Mama tells you everything? You don't need that thing to feed me a plate of applesauce. Say, did you start the rumor Dolly was murdered?”

  “Next thing you know you'll be accusing me of starting the Chicago fire.”

  “Who would want to murder Dolly?”

  “Who would want to murder anybody in this town? Everybody's got a reason to kill somebody else out here. Aren't there some old scores you'd like to settle?”

  “If anybody murdered Dolly, I'm going to find him and kill him.”

  “What makes you so sure it’s a 'him'?”

  Chief Inspector Herbert Villon of the Los Angeles Police Department sat behind the desk in his claustrophobic office with his feet propped atop the desk He was reading in the latest Photoplay magazine an interview with the up-and-coming young Paramount Pictures actress, Jean Arthur Seated in the room’s only other chair was an almost homely young woman named Hazel Dickson, Hazel was a reporter for the United Press and was considered a brilliant scavenger of hot Hollywood items. “Come on, Herb, put down the magazine and talk to me.”

  “Get a look at this Jean Arthur What a cute hunk of flesh “

  “I’m built better.” And she wasn't lying, but her face was something else. Not exactly ugly, not exactly homely, not completely undistinguished, it was the kind of face that drew admiration only when her mouth was open and talking. Her tongue was a dangerous weapon and she wielded it indiscriminately. Herbert Villon set the magazine aside and folded his arms across his impressive chest. He was in his mid-thirties and insisted he was a direct descendant of the French poet, Francois Villon. Despite this, there was nothing poetic about Herbert Villon. He was probably one of the youngest chief inspectors in the United States and could still not understand why he had landed the job over several others who held greater seniority. Still, Villon reserved his detecting for more important problems.

  “Why don't you interview Jacob Udell? He's in one of the cells upstairs and very lonely. Nobody comes to visit him.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “He raped a seventeen-year-old virgin “

  “I'm not interested in breaking and entering. I want to know why there was no autopsy performed on Dolly Lovelace “

  “The coronor said her mouth, her throat, and a lot of her guts were burned b
y acid, so why bother?”

  “I heard different. I heard her father wouldn’t permit it. That's never stopped you guys before. I think somebody high up in the studios pulled some strings and schmeared some palms to call the autopsy off.”

  “Nobody bribes me, Hazel, you know that.”

  “Sure, sure But that's a hell of a hot rumor going around that her suicide was no suicide. Why don't you exhume her body and order an autopsy anyway?”

  “Because that would take a lot of red tape and a lot of explaining and you don't exhume a body to help kill a rumor.”

  “You might also substantiate the rumor.”

  “I wish you hadn't gone to college. I wonder if Jean Arthur went to college.”

  “Aw, screw Jean Arthur?”

  “I'd love to.”

  She left the chair while opening her handbag and surveying her face in a pocket mirror. After a moment she sighed and said, “God might have done worse.”

  “I think you’re cute “

  She leaned across the desk “You know something, Herbert, meeting you must be the lowlight of my life.”

  “Why don't you take me to dinner on your expense account?”

  “Because I've got me a previous engagement.”

  “Oh yeah? Who with?”

  “I don't mind telling you. Ezekiel Lovelace, Dolly's poppa.” She wiggled her hips as she walked out of the office “Don't take no wooden nickels!”

  It was Villon's face that was wooden.

  FOUR

  Hazel Dickson's Model T Ford clattered at the breakneck speed of forty miles an hour toward her rendezvous with Ezekiel Lovelace in Inglewood. Like Annamary Darling, Hazel had been curious as to why none of Dolly Lovelace's immediate family had attended her funeral. Following the outrageous ceremony. Hazel had beelincd to the morgue at Picture Play magazine and read up on the departed Dolly. A few of the purported interviews sounded genuine; the rest were easily detected as sham press agent puffery. There were the early photos of Dolly when she was just beginning. Dolly dressed as a Pilgrim and menacing a turkey with an ax.; Dolly as Santa Claus on the roof of a house, a pack of toys on her back, one foot already in the chimney. Dolly at the seashore frolicking in the waves with some other curvaceous bathing beauties. Dolly seemed to have graduated quickly to portrait shots by the studio's ace photographers. She had been proving herself in supporting roles, the final step into stardom unless she tripped herself up. But Dolly had matriculated into stardom with top honors and flying colors and was being wooed by the Prince Charming of Hollywood, Jack Darling. Was it really possible that her whirlwind ascent had occurred in less than two years?

  Hazel pulled up in front of a mailbox on which was printed LOVELACE. The mailbox was sagging to the right, possibly exhausted by its years of service. There was a fence of wooden palings badly in need of Tom Sawyer and his pail of whitewash. Hazel went up the path leading to a gate that had hinges thirsting for oil. The front lawn needed mowing. A cinder path led to some sagging wooden steps that in turn led up to a porch of a bungalow shingled with poverty.

  It was a warm and humid day, contradicting Hazel's ice-cold fingertips. There was a knocker on the door and Hazel used it. After a short wait, Hazel used the knocker again. She crossed to a window and looked in. She saw a shabby interior with threadbare furniture and wondered if she was the victim of a hoax. Dolly Lovelace had made good money, surely she could have provided her father with better surroundings than these.

  She tapped on the window. “Mr. Lovelace? Hello? Hello, Mr. Lovelace?” Her voice rose an octave “It's Hazel Dickson!” She went to the door and rattled the knob The door opened Hazel stuck her head inside and shouted his name. She waited. No response. She thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. A news-hen must get her story any which way. She crossed the shabby living room. There were some framed photographs of Dolly on a table, so she knew she was in the right place. On a sideboard there were other frames but no photographs. Odd, she thought. There was a hallway off which there were two bedrooms, one on the left and one on the right. This led to the kitchen in the back of the bungalow. It was obvious whoever furnished and decorated the bungalow was not a candidate for any awards. From the hall Hazel could see dirty dishes stacked in the sink. There was a foul odor of garbage and Hazel was of a mind to make tracks out of there. But no, she was the stalwart scavenger of juicy tidbits and she was determined to have her interview with Ezekiel Lovelace. Ezekiel. How biblical, how quaint, how dead.

  Or at least as first seen, she assumed he was dead. He was sitting in a kitchen chair, his head hanging back, his mouth gaping open, and if Hazel wasn't mistaken, those were acid stains burning his lips. Hazel hurried back to the living room where she had spotted a telephone and gave central Herbert Villon's private number.

  * * *

  Stage 6 at the Diamond Films Studios was still waiting to be converted to sound. But it was being used anyway because the Diamond chain of theaters across the United States was clamoring for talkers and more talkers and even more talkers, and Alexander Roland was committed to grinding out at least fifty-two talkers a year, a staggering one a week. He was not alone. At Metro and Paramount they were shooting around the clock. Stars whose contracts still had some months to go were doing as many as three pictures at a time. The greedy studios wanted more than their pound of flesh, so actors shot sequences for one film in the morning, bicycled in the afternoon to another stage for service in the second film, and then after bolting a hasty supper of a sandwich and a cup of coffee, continued into the night filming on the third film. Some lucky ones even managed to get some sleep

  “Is it no wonder,” moaned Diamond second-string actress Laura Gates, “I look like a hag of forty, I haven't had any sleep in twenty hours!” She was sitting in the makeup room with several other Diamond contract players who were suffering a similar circumstance She said to the woman doing her face, “Listen, Gert, make me look the way I think I look.”

  Gert cracked the gum she was chewing and said, “In this next scene you're a corpse, honey You gotta look as lousy as you look.”

  “What do you mean corpse? I’m supposed to be a bridesmaid at this society wedding!”

  “That's tonight. This afternoon you're a corpse.”

  “I’m going mad! I know I’m going mad! I was a corpse yesterday morning! Ain't I been buried yet?”

  “You're the same corpse today. The sound was ruined by that plane what flew over and today's a retake “

  “Nobody tells me nothing “

  “That's what you get for not sleeping with the right people,” said Tessa Main, who was sitting in the next chair patiently waiting for her makeup girl to finish penciling in her eyebrows.

  “The trouble with sleeping with the right people is that there are too many of them,” replied Laura Gates wearily. “If the men I slept with in this town were laid end to end, they still wouldn't be satisfied. Like when I slept with Sam Goldwyn he kept making cracks about my eyeglasses,”

  Tessa Main squinted at Laura Gates, “You wear eyeglasses when you’re getting laid?”

  “Well, for crying out loud, I've got to see what I'm doing, don't I? Well, anyway, finally I'm fed up with the cracks and I say, ‘Okay, Mr Goldwyn, when you sign me to a contract you can tell me what kind of glasses I should be wearing ' And he says, 'Girlie, I can tell you now. You'd look better in bisexuals.' Which explains why I'm at Diamond Films and not with Goldwyn “ She looked at her reflection in the mirror and howled “Oh my God, I look like Buster Keaton!”

  Jack Darling had wandered onto stage 6. One of the grips greeted him. “Hey, kiddo, where you been keeping yourself? Long time no see!”

  “I've been resting, Bugsy What's shooting here?”

  “Some piece of turd called The Bride Wore Sneakers.”

  “They'll have to change the title.”

  “They'll have to change the cast. Boy, are they stinko. All from New York. Watch 'em rehearse. Look at 'em. They're frightened stiff. Look at the blond bitc
h “

  “I’m looking She's cute.”

  “Watch her walk, she moves like a robot with a spear up its ass.”

  Jack watched her walk She moved like a windup doll. She was terrified of the camera, an affliction not easily cured. But she was so pretty and so young and so anxious to make good. Perhaps she would. He remembered the first film he'd ever appeared in some fourteen years ago, when he was a callow sixteen. It was the first of his long and tiresome series of films with a rural background. He was walking barefoot along a path through the woods with his fishing pole over his left shoulder, a battered straw hat on his head, wearing dirty overalls and chewing on a strand of straw. He remembered Henry Turk, the director, patiently explaining, “No no. Jack, you mustn't look at the camera. Just amble along lazily and casually, look up at the sky, and be glad it's a beautiful day. Off camera you can hear a lark trilling and you smile because you love the trill of the lark Now let's take it again, Jack, nice and easy “

  Jack remembered Henry Turk's hysteria four hours later. “Don't look at the fucking camera, you stupid sonofabitch! I don't give a mothers fuck if your sisters the biggest star on the lot! You're the stupidest fuck-up I've ever worked with! Oh God, have mercy and strike him with a bolt of lightning!” He was glaring into Jack's face, frothing at the mouth, shaking him savagely by the shoulders. “Don't you know how to amble? You’re still walking like you're stalking a fucking deer. When you see the sky don't you know how to look glad? You look like you just took a dump in your pants! Did you never hear a bird singing? Oh my God, oh my God?” He was tearing at his hair “Doesn't anybody around here know how to make a silk purse out of a sow's behind?”

  “No no no no no, Miss Leddy! You are crossing the room to greet your lover who has just returned from the war! His left eye’s been shot out! His right arm's in a sling and he's lost his left leg!” It was the same Henry Turk who had directed Jack's film debut, now looking about eighty years old though he couldn't have been more than fifty “You have to look brave and compassionate and there must be no trace of pity in your eyes. He's a hero and you're proving to him you're just as brave. That you're also a good little soldier.” He paused as though shot from behind with an arrow. He shouted at the continuity girl. “Cecelia! Take a note to Alexander Roland Maybe instead of The Bride Wore Sneakers, which is to vomit, we should maybe retitle it The Good Little Soldier.”