Citizen Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 3)

by Martin Turnbull

  Her mind turned to Orson Welles and the way her stomach turned to mush whenever she saw him. They’d seen each other on the crowded dance floors of the nightclubs along the Sunset Strip several times now, and there was no mistaking the flirty-dirty look in his eyes.

  By the time the movie reached its incoherent end, Kathryn had decided that what happened tonight was for the best. She was wasting her time with Roy. It might be different if he was available, but he wasn’t and he never would be. She deserved better.

  The lights in the auditorium came up and Kathryn turned to Marcus. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go find someplace and order us up the biggest damned burgers this side of the Rockies.”

  They made their way into the foyer. When Marcus said he needed a pit stop in the men’s room, he did a double take and told her she might want to do a repair job. Inside the ladies’ room she saw what he meant. Between the smudged eyeliner and bleeding mascara, she looked like the neighborhood scary cat lady.

  As she set about restoring her makeup, she spotted a well-turned-out woman in her early thirties. Her outfit—a smartly tailored suit trimmed in suede—was classy but not showy, and the confident way she carried herself made her stand out among the nine-to-five suburban crowd. As the woman let herself into a stall, Kathryn blinked. She knew this woman, but from where? The Hollywood Women’s Press Club, maybe?

  Kathryn continued to ponder it as she repaired her face. When the woman opened the stall door and stepped out toward the mirrors, Kathryn got a better look. She shoved her cosmetics back into her purse and hurried out of the ladies’ room to find Marcus charging toward her.

  “You know who I think I just saw in the gents?” he asked.

  As Kathryn blurted out, “Irene Selznick!,” Marcus blurted out, “David Selznick!”

  They grabbed each other’s hands, wide-eyed with excitement. Moviegoers were starting to file back into the cinema. Marcus and Kathryn returned to their seats just as a short, pale man with a trimmed moustache appeared on stage, swiping a handkerchief across his forehead. He called for the audience’s attention.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to inform you that our feature presentation will not be shown tonight.” He let the audience get out their groans. “We have a surprise sneak preview of a new motion picture. I’m not at liberty to share with you its title. However, I will tell you this: once the picture has commenced, this theater will be sealed. If you choose to leave, you will not be permitted to re-enter.”

  A few people got up to go, but most of the audience, now intrigued, remained in their seats. The swell of murmurs abated as the lights dimmed. Music started up, lush and full and very romantic.

  Then a loud, military-like drum roll filled the theater and a white sign appeared on the screen. The words “A Selznick International Picture” filled the sign as church bells pealed. Nobody in the cinema reacted. Kathryn groped for Marcus’ hand. The sign faded and the screen filled with large white letters.

  Selznick International in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has the honor to present its Technicolor production of . . .

  By this point Kathryn’s heart was beating so hard she felt as though she were about to bust apart at the seams.

  The screen faded to black, then gave way to footage of slaves toiling in a field. More words appeared: Margaret Mitchell’s Story of the Old South.

  Almost as one, the audience gasped and a guy several rows behind Kathryn called out, “IT’S GONE WITH THE WIND!”

  The audience erupted in a hullabaloo of cheers and whistles. On the screen, an enormous oak tree stood silhouetted by a glowing red sunset. As violins and cellos swelled toward a climax, white letters so enormous that each word filled the screen by itself started to scroll from right to left: G O N E—W I T H—T H E—W I N D

  Hats flew into the air, someone screamed “Yes!,” and the woman next to Kathryn started to sob. “I’ve waited so long for this moment,” she blubbered. “I’m unprepared . . . I’m overwhelmed . . .”

  A new title filled the screen, “Starring CLARK GABLE as Rhett Butler,” and the crowd erupted again, whooping and hollering like it was the end of the Civil War itself. The words started to scroll up from the bottom of the screen. Thunderous applause greeted each announcement of a new cast member, and they were still clapping when the final credits—a list of twenty or so minor players—appeared on the screen against a red and orange backdrop of a sunset. It didn’t stop until the first scene opened with Scarlett O’Hara sitting on the porch with the Tarleton Twins.

  As the camera zoomed in for a close-up on Vivien Leigh, Kathryn let out a silent OH! The Brit who stole the role from every deserving American actress looked exactly as Kathryn had always pictured Scarlett. Then Vivien spoke her first line.

  “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! War! War! War! This war talk is spoiling all the fun at every party this spring.”

  Leigh had perfected such a flawless Southern accent that Kathryn’s ears tingled. She leaned into Marcus but before she could say anything, he whispered, “Did you get a load of the accent? She IS Scarlett O’Hara!”

  CHAPTER 11

  Gwendolyn was reapplying her darkest red lipstick when Kathryn came into the bathroom for a hairbrush. Their eyes met in the mirror, then Kathryn raised her eyebrows.

  “You’re putting on your best lipstick to make a phone call?”

  “It’s my version of Dutch courage,” Gwendolyn replied, and checked her face.

  “When are you calling him?”

  “Right now.”

  “You want some privacy?”

  Gwendolyn grabbed her friend’s wrist. “No! I want you here for moral support.”

  They were in the living room now. Half of it was strewn with dressmaking paraphernalia—mannequin, swaths of material, huge sewing basket—Gwendolyn needed in order to make her next rent contribution: an evening gown Kathryn wanted to wear to next month’s premiere for the new Bob Hope/Paulette Goddard picture, The Cat and the Canary. Gwendolyn picked up the telephone and told the operator to connect her with the number Zanuck gave her, and held the receiver up so they could both hear. When a secretary answered, Gwendolyn gave the woman her name and told her Zanuck had asked her to call him during the first week of October.

  “And what it’s in connection to?” the secretary asked.

  “The face.”

  “Whose face?”

  “That’s what he told me to tell you when I called.”

  The secretary put her on hold. The next thing she heard was Zanuck booming into her ear. “Blondie!” His voice gob-smacked her into silence. She’d spent four weeks preparing herself to get kicked to the curb yet again. “You did what I said, didn’t you?” Zanuck asked.

  “You mean about dyeing my hair blonder?”

  She’d had it done a week ago. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but she was getting bigger tips at the Cocoanut Grove than ever before. “Yes, I did, and you were right, Mr. Zanuck.”

  “Fine, fine.” She could tell he’d already been distracted. He whispered instructions to someone. “I gotta tell you how grateful I am over what happened at that poker game. Or what didn’t happen.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “So I’d like to return the favor.”

  Gwendolyn’s heart started thumping. She grabbed Kathryn by the pinkie. “What did you have in mind?”

  “You heard of Harlan McNamara, ain’t you?” Gwendolyn looked at Kathryn, who shook her head. “Sure you have. All you tootsie girls have heard of Harlan. But not everyone can afford him, am I right? Got a pen and paper?” Kathryn handed them over and held the phone to Gwendolyn’s ear. “Harlan McNamara. Sixty-six forty Hollywood Boulevard. Corner of Wilcox. You go see him and you tell him you’re the tootsie roll Zanuck told him about. Tell him it’s about the face.” Gwendolyn heard a voice in the background. “Okay, okay,” Zanuck said. “Look, Blondie, got to go. Crisis with the new Charlie Chan; two hundred people waiting for me. Good luck to you!”

 
Gwendolyn slowly put the phone down. “Who the hell is Harlan McNamara?”

  “And what does he want to do with your face?”

  * * *

  By the time Gwendolyn alighted from the Red Car at the corner of Hollywood and Highland and started walking east, she’d pushed from her mind the montage of back-alley plastic surgeons with blunt knives and spittley mouths that had floundered across her imagination since Zanuck hung up.

  She arrived at the address—a conventionally respectable eight-story cream brick office building—and found Harlan’s listing on the top floor. The door to suite 8G opened onto a small foyer where two seats were separated by a low chrome table. She peered around the room for clues about who—or more importantly what—this guy was. But there were no magazines or potted plants, and nothing hung on the walls except a layer of midtone terracotta paint.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  A short man, five foot four at most, stood at the door on the other side of the waiting room. He hovered around forty and was thinning on top, but slim and not unattractive in his finely woven gabardine pants. If he was a back-alley surgeon, at least he had good taste. “I have no appointments today,” he informed her.

  “Mr. Zanuck told me to come see you.”

  “Oh, he did, huh?”

  Gwendolyn pictured him in a surgical gown and wielding a scalpel. She started to back away. “How silly of me,” she said. “I didn’t think to make an appointment. I really didn’t mean to barge in like th—”

  “You’re here now.” He stepped to one side and made a ladies first motion with his hand.

  Gwendolyn followed him into a large room and took a look at the equipment scattered around. The lights, the sofa, the velvet backdrops in white, grey, brown, and black. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “you’re a photographer!”

  He frowned at her. “What did you think I was?”

  “I didn’t—Mr. Zanuck didn’t—”

  The guy studied Gwendolyn for a few moments, then his eyes lit up like somebody had flipped a switch inside his head. He broke into the warmest smile she’d seen all year. “You’re a face girl!”

  Gwendolyn looked back at the camera and a sofa sitting in front of a dove-grey velvet curtain. “I think so, yes.”

  Harlan let out a loud “HA!” and said, “You have no idea what any of this is about, do you?” He grinned. “Good. It means everybody’s kept their traps shut.”

  He led her to a sofa against a painted brick wall and sat down with her. “Photoplay is about to launch a competition in their November issue. It’s called Face of the Forties, and it’s a search to find a fresh face that embodies the new decade. First prize is a thousand bucks, a new wardrobe from Bullock’s Wilshire, and a guaranteed walk-on in an A-list feature. Can you imagine how many girls are going to try their luck?”

  “Thousands,” Gwendolyn guessed.

  “Try tens of, and you’d be closer. You couldn’t pay me enough to be on the selection committee. Narrowing it down from every cheerleader between Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon, to the final twenty-five is what I call a nightmare. But you’ve got to hand it to Warners. It’s the Hope Diamond of publicity stunts.”

  “Warners? But Darrel Zanuck runs Fox.”

  McNamara broke out into a lopsided grin that reminded Gwendolyn of her brother. “The Big Z was in a poker game a while back; losing real bad, all night long. Finally, he got this can’t-lose hand, but he was clear out of dough. So he writes ‘FACE OF THE FORTIES’ on some paper and throws it into the pot. It gets down to him and Max Arnow. Zanuck shows his cards—four of a kind—and goes to scoop the pot when Arnow shows his royal flush. Bingo! Face of the Forties is now a Warner Brothers publicity scheme.” McNamara snapped his fingers. “Say, you’re not the Tippler’s Bane girl, are you?”

  Gwendolyn looked at him, relieved that she finally registered in someone’s mind for something other than her Scarlett screen test. Better to be the Tippler’s Bane girl than the Flash Her Hootchie-Cootchie girl. She nodded.

  “What a story!” McNamara exclaimed. “I haven’t laughed so hard in years. He told me about it when we got drunk after some premiere bombed. I’m probably the only person he told—the man’s got too much ego invested in his he-man image. The important thing is that you, my dear, are going to get a bunch of photos that will knock their socks off over at Warners.” He picked up a camera. “So, are you in?”

  Gwendolyn nodded and put down her handbag. “Mr. McNamara, I was born in.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Marcus watched the bellboy, Jake, hang a huge spider web of white string over the Garden of Allah’s check-in desk while he picked up the lobby telephone. “This is Marcus.”

  “But why aren’t you at work?” Hugo’s voice was so hoarse it sounded like somebody was strangling him.

  “Officially, I’m down with a twenty-four-hour bug. Unofficially, I’m surprising Ramon at Union Station. He gets back from Europe today.” Marcus had barely been able to sleep since Ramon cabled him from New York.

  “Oh, Christ,” Hugo whispered, making Marcus’ pulse quicken. “There was a memo on everyone’s desk this morning. Get a load of this: ‘You will recall I challenged every writer in the department to come up with an idea as good as Robin Hood, and that the last person to submit his would need to seek alternative employment. Since nobody got fired, I expect you all decided I had no intention of making good on my threat. If that’s what you thought, you are a moron and don’t deserve to be employed by Hollywood’s greatest motion picture studio. All staff are to assemble in the conference room at eleven o’clock. Tardiness is not recommended.’”

  Marcus let his head drop down onto his chest. “But you and Taggert settled all that.”

  “So I thought.”

  A clammy sweat broke out across Marcus’ forehead as he watched Jake tack a papier-mâché spider the size of a dinner plate to the wall above the web.

  “Buddy boy,” Hugo said, “if Taggert’s looking to fire someone today, do you really want to be the only writer not in the room?”

  * * *

  Marcus ran full pelt through the front gate of MGM at two to eleven and made it to the meeting room just as everyone was filing in. As was the custom at the studio on Halloween, most people were in costume. There were two Tarzans, a Napoleon, a pirate, assorted sailors of various ranks, a circus ringmaster, three clowns, a couple of chain-gang prisoners, and Dorothy Parker dressed up as Little Bo Peep, complete with hooked staff.

  Taggert strode into the room in his usual pinstripe suit. Other than Marcus, he was the only staff member not in costume.

  Taggert looked at Marcus. “Thought you were off sick today.”

  “Just a doctor’s appointment.” Marcus swiped his forehead.

  “If you’ve brought in some bug,” Taggert said, “I’ll come for you with my rifle.”

  Marcus looked around for Hugo and found him dressed like an Indian out of Drums Along the Mohawk with daubs of bold blue paint streaked across his face. Marcus felt awkwardly underdressed and wished he’d come up with some clever costume to greet Ramon in. He caught Hugo’s eye and mouthed Thank you.

  The writers were gathered around the conference room, some sitting, some standing, all of them apprehensive. Taggert scrutinized them with the eye of a hungry vulture. “I thought this morning’s missive would do the trick.”

  “What choice did you give us?” Hoppy said. Marcus hadn’t noticed him, but he was sitting next to Little Bo Parker, dressed as Rumpelstiltskin. Hoppy leaned forward so everyone could see him and pushed the pointed orange felt cap away from his face.

  “Got something to say?” Taggert growled.

  “Nope.” Hoppy leaned back into his chair again.

  Taggert shot him the stink eye, then turned to the gathering. “I’ve held a series of meetings with LB deciding where to take MGM for the 1940s. Beau Geste. Gunga Din. Robin Hood. See a pattern, anyone?”

  “Pretty boys in tights?”

  Everyone laugh
ed; another stink eye for Hoppy.

  “Adventure stories,” Taggert said. “Heroic men. Villains and oppressors. Those three movies have been hugely successful. I don’t give a rat’s ass what the rumors are about Gone with the Wind; Civil War pictures never make a dime. Two point five million for an overblown, overproduced, overwrought women’s picture? What a crock.”

  He let out a raw grunt. “Europe’s going to be too busy blasting the crap out of each other to go to the movies. So for the time being, we’ve only got the domestic market to see us through. Americans like adventure with a capital A. Fight scenes, clanking swords, archers with deadly arrows, soldiers on horseback. I asked each of you for just one solid, useable idea. What did I get?” He thudded his fist onto a stack of papers. “This pile of horseshit from writers being paid more loot in a year than my father earned in twenty.”

  Some of the most creative minds in the country had nothing to say. Everyone stayed motionless, willing themselves not to go pale. Marcus looked at his watch. It was eleven thirteen. If this meeting takes only ten minutes more, he figured, I could be on Washington Boulevard looking for a taxicab before eleven thirty. It was enough time, but only just.

  “I cannot begin to voice my disappointment,” Taggert continued. “Actually, I could, but I would go on all day, and none of us have that sort of time. So I’ve called you here to announce a reshuffling of assignments of the only ideas Mayer and I considered useable. These projects are considered top-level priority development. And the writers I’m assigning them to will now be classed as A-list writers with an appropriate raise in pay.”

  The air in the room thickened. Taggert picked up a handful of sheets from the top of the pile. “King Tutankhamen. Paul Revere. Eric the Red Viking. Davy Crockett. George Washington. William Tell. Thomas Edison. I’ve got thirty of the so-called top brains in Hollywood, so how come I only got seven useable ideas?”

  Marcus breathed out for the first time in over a minute, even though there was no guarantee he’d be given his own idea to work on. Especially since his first picture hadn’t been released yet.