Two days after she got the telegram from Max Factor, she was in a meeting with all the honchos discussing a fifteen-minute chat show they wanted to call Window on Hollywood—the same title as her column. Twenty-four hours later she had a contract and ten days to put a show together. Life felt like a montage from a Lubitsch picture.
She’d hoped to precede The Great Guildersleeve on Sunday night, but NBC gave her Friday evenings when people were at nightclubs or dinner parties. Even worse, they inserted her ahead of a new police whodunit nobody had heard of, Dragnet. But she did have her own radio show, so she was thankful for that.
When she telephoned Bette Davis to call in her promise, Bette said, “Of course! And I can give you your first scoop.” Kathryn gripped the receiver. Bette had almost cackled with glee. “After nineteen years of indenture, my final day at Warner Brothers is to be August ninth!”
Without Bette, the show would kick off with a whimper, not the brass band she’d hoped for.
Gwendolyn walked in with Bertie and Doris trailing behind her. “Any word?”
“How could she do this to me?”
“Can’t you get a replacement?” Gwendolyn asked.
“With less than forty-five minutes to air?” Kathryn knew how shrill she sounded, but there were now five of them crowded into her dressing room and she was starting to panic.
“What about Tallulah? She’s always game.”
“No go,” Marcus said. “I read in Variety that she’s touring Private Lives around New England.”
“You read Variety?” Kathryn asked pointedly.
“I read everything.”
Wallace Reed poked his creased brow into the room. “I’m getting worried.”
Reed had been the unflappable producer on Kraft Music Hall. During the Kraft years, they’d had very few disasters, but when they did blow up, his composure got them through.
Kathryn realized she was squeezing her hands together and consciously unlaced her fingers. “I know it’s getting late.”
“You told her it’s a one-hour call, right?”
“She’s done a million of these things. She knows how it works.”
“But it’s seven twenty—” he consulted his wristwatch “—two.”
WHERE THE HELL IS SHE? “Probably just stuck in traffic.” Kathryn flapped her hand around in an attempt to sound airy. I’M GOING TO THROTTLE HER. “You know how bad traffic’s gotten lately.”
“And if she doesn’t show?” Reed asked. “You’ve got a backup, haven’t you?”
“Several, so no need to worry!”
Reed appeared to be satisfied with Kathryn’s bald-faced lie, and withdrew.
“This is going to sound extreme, but I have an idea.” Bertie said. “I do a pretty damn good Tallulah Bankhead impersonation.”
“In front of three hundred people?” Kathryn burst out.
Marcus held up his hand to stop her and turned to Bertie. “Show us what you can do.”
Bertie flicked her head back. “Dahling! I simply cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to be your very first guest! Why, just yesterday, I was saying to Noel Coward, ‘Noelie! Dahling! One of my absolute favorite people in the world has her own radio show and she’s asked me to be her first guest. Isn’t that simply mahvelous?!’”
What Bertie was proposing was outrageous—but damn, if she didn’t sound just like Tallulah.
“That’s really quite uncanny,” Kathryn admitted, “but I don’t see how we could get away with it.”
Seven twenty-four.
“What if we billed her as The World’s Greatest Tallulah Bankhead Impersonator?” Marcus suggested.
Kathryn ran her fingers through her hair. “Reed would have a fit!” I’m about to have one right now.
“If it comes down to the wire,” Bertie said, “he won’t have much choice.”
“Isn’t there anyone else we can get? Preferably with a picture to promote.”
“What about Gable?” Gwendolyn exclaimed. “He’s got a new movie coming out with Alexis Smith.”
Kathryn turned to Marcus. “Weren’t you on good terms with him when you left MGM?”
“Sure,” he replied, but she could already read his mind: You might as well be asking for God. “But someone from the Garden of Allah would be more likely to jump in.”
Doris snapped her fingers. “What about Bogie?”
“That’s not a bad idea!” Kathryn dove into her little black book.
“But they live way up Benedict Canyon.” Bertie said. “Even if he left right now, could he get here in less than thirty minutes?”
“He doesn’t have to,” Doris said. “He’s filming Knock On Any Door with us.”
Doris had recently started work at Columbia, which was only three blocks away.
“He’ll still be there?” Kathryn asked.
“He’s producing the picture under his own company. He’s always the first one to arrive and the last to leave.”
Kathryn laid her hand on the telephone. “Do you know the number?”
Doris shook her head. “But the main switchboard doesn’t go off until nine.”
Seven twenty-eight. If this is what it’s like to head your own radio show, I don’t think I’ve got the stamina.
Kathryn flipped to “C” and dialed Columbia’s main switchboard. When the operator put her through to the Santana production office, Kathryn could scarcely believe it when Bogie himself answered.
“Hi there, it’s me, Kathryn. Sorry to do this to you, but I’m in the most terrible bind. My new radio show starts tonight. Half an hour from now, in fact. My guest was supposed to be Bette Davis, but she hasn’t shown up. So I’m hoping—no, pleading that you—”
“Bette? She’s right here.” Bogie let out a slurred giggle. “She dropped in to see how we’re going on our independent picture. Personally, I think she’s trying to avoid going home to her husband. You want me to put her on?”
Kathryn heard more giggling before Bette’s voice boomed down the line. “Kathryn, my sweet, are you in a tizzy?”
“What are you doing there? You’re supposed to be here!”
“Why? Where are you?”
“At NBC. Remember? My show?”
Bette took a leisurely drag of her cigarette. “But you start next week.”
“No! Tonight!”
“That’s what I thought, but Ruby Courtland insisted I had it all wrong.”
Kathryn wanted to bash the receiver into the wall. “Ruby? From Variety? Is sitting there right now? And she told you my show starts next week?” She was repeating this out loud for the benefit of the others in her dressing room. That conniving little bitch.
“She was, yes. She just left.”
Marcus got to his feet. “My car’s out front. I can be at Columbia in two minutes.”
Kathryn nodded furiously and mouthed, “Go! GO!” He sprinted toward the exit. “Bette?” Kathryn drew in a ragged breath. “We go to air in twenty-seven minutes.”
“Oh, Kathryn, no! I feel terrible.”
“You remember my friend Marcus? He’s going to be out front in two minutes. He’s in a yellow Buick.”
“But I’ve come straight from the studio!” Bette croaked. “I look a fright. I can’t appear wearing this getup in front of a live audience.”
Kathryn looked at Gwendolyn. She was in a sundress, tiny green checks with white lapels. It looked more like one of Joan Crawford’s costumes from Mildred Pierce, but it’d have to do.
Gwendolyn whispered, “I have safety pins in my purse if it doesn’t fit.”
“We’ve got that covered,” Kathryn yelled down the line. “Just get here!”
She hung up as Reed appeared in the doorway again. “I heard yelling. Please tell me it’s the good sort.”
“Bette got stuck at Columbia and—”
“What was she doing there?”
Ruby goddamned Courtland is what she was doing there. “She’s only three blocks away.” Kathryn silently begged the guy to lea
ve.
“As long as everything is in hand.”
“It absolutely is!” Kathryn swallowed hard so she wouldn’t sound like she was hopped up on bennies. “We’ll meet you in the wings in a few minutes.”
Nobody breathed until Reed left.
“Bertie,” Kathryn said, “park yourself at the stage door. I need you to hold it open for Bette. Meanwhile—” Gwendolyn was already pulling at her side zipper. “Do you think it’ll fit?”
She’d sewn a dress for Bette once before. “If her measurements are the same, it’ll be a bit loose around the bust, but the waist should be close enough, give or take.”
Kathryn collapsed onto her vanity stool and looked at herself in the mirror. “Is this really all worth it?”
“Of course it’s worth it!” Doris joined her at the mirror. She crumpled her round little face so earnestly that it made Kathryn smile. “How many women on the radio have their own show?” She started kneading Kathryn’s knotted shoulders. “You’re a role model and a trailblazer! This business with Bette Davis is just a last-minute snafu. And she’s a trouper—you know that. She’ll jump into Gwendolyn’s dress, run a brush through her hair, and she’ll be good to go. You’ll see.”
Kathryn couldn’t bring herself to check the time. “On Kraft Music Hall, all I had to do was show up. I’ll never live it down if this blows up in my face.”
“Hey now!” Doris dug her thumbs into Kathryn’s shoulder muscles. Her hands were surprisingly strong. “Nothing’s exploding in anybody’s face.”
“Yet.”
“Worst-case scenario is Bertie goes on as Tallulah Bankhead and everybody gets a big laugh.”
“What is it you do at Columbia?”
Doris rolled her eyes. “I started out as a grunt. But now they’ve got me reorganizing the prop department. It was a junk shop in there.”
“You should be in PR,” Kathryn said. Seven forty-three. “You’ve got a very human touch about you.”
“GANG WAY!” Bertie’s voice boomed down the corridor. Running footsteps followed.
Doris closed the door as soon as Bette came in. The next five minutes was a flurry of apologies, hairbrushes, zippers, safety pins, lipstick, and cuss words. Before Kathryn could get nervous, she and Bette were standing shoulder to shoulder on the wings of the NBC stage.
* * *
Kathryn turned out of the NBC parking lot and headed north up Vine Street. For reasons Bette hadn’t bothered to explain, her car was still at Warner Bros.
Bette fell back into the passenger seat and let out a long sigh. “It went off rather well, don’t you think?”
“I’m glad you think so. That was the longest fifteen minutes of my life.”
Bette patted Kathryn’s knee. “Congratulations on a job well done. Window on Hollywood got off to a flying start. You should be thrilled.”
“I’ll be thrilled when I get some whiskey in me. Right now I feel like one of those poor souls who got trampled on by King Kong.”
“Trust me,” Bette said, “in my dressing room there is puh-lenty of fortification.”
“Beyond the Forest still not going well? Even with King Vidor directing?”
“They should retitle it Beyond the Pale. Put it this way: my character attempts to induce an abortion by throwing herself off a cliff. Who does that? After eighteen years, this piece of trash is going to be my final Warners picture. But you know what? I’m so fed up that I don’t even care. I’m counting the days.”
The two women rode in silence as the shadows of Hollywood passed by. It was after nine o’clock now and hardly anybody was on the street.
“Those guys who follow your timeslot,” Bette said, “my goodness but they’re a serious bunch, aren’t they? What’s their show called?”
“Dragnet.”
Bette blew a raspberry. “Sounds like something one of Gwendolyn’s clients would throw over his wig once it’s set.”
Even Kathryn was surprised by the laugh that erupted out of her. It came from deep inside her belly, cathartic as a purgative, and brought tears to her eyes until she had to pull over in front of a court of bungalows at the top of Vine.
She dabbed at her eyes. “Oh, Lord, I needed that.”
Bette reached into her purse. “I was going to hold off until we got back to the studio, but screw it.”
As Bette rummaged around her purse, Kathryn said, “I need to talk to you about Ruby Courtland.”
Bette lit a cigarette and held out one for Kathryn. “I must say, I’m surprised she’s a friend of yours.”
“What on earth makes you think that?”
“You should have heard the way she was gushing about you back in Bogie’s office. It was all Kathryn this, and Kathryn that. ‘I look up to her so much! Of all the careers in Hollywood, it’s Kathryn Massey’s that I want to emulate!’ Oh, brother! She laid it on so thick I nearly gagged. No offense.”
Kathryn paused to enjoy the hit of nicotine. “She was there to sabotage me this evening. I do not know how she knew you’d be there.”
Bette rolled down her window. “What does she have against you?”
“She wants what I’ve got.”
“But without having to work for it, I suppose?”
Kathryn tossed the idea around for a moment. “There might be some truth to that.”
“Ugh. I’ve been fighting rich bitches like her my whole life. Entitlement, entitlement, entitlement.”
“She comes from money?”
“King’s wife, Elizabeth, visited our set the other day to cheer him up, and she mentioned how Ruby was some sort of big-deal debutante back East.”
Kathryn pictured Ruby that day on the Samson and Delilah set, with her dull, straight hair and her insipid outfit. “What else did Elizabeth say?”
“Something about her father earning a fortune during the war. I didn’t know who she was talking about, so I changed the subject. Then she popped up in Bogie’s dressing room tonight, all sweet as pie and fawning like Ruby of Sunnybrook Farm. Now that I know otherwise, I wish I’d paid more attention. I can’t believe I fell for that story of hers. You’re not going to let her get away with it, are you?”
Kathryn turned the key, disengaged the clutch, and pulled back onto the deserted street. “Not a chance in hell.”
CHAPTER 25
Gwendolyn felt the thrum of the engine as she ran a finger along Marcus’ dashboard. The setting sun shone directly into their faces, and she was glad to see Marcus losing the pallor he’d acquired since his relationship with Oliver went south. He’d gently rebuffed her attempts to draw him away from his sofa, so their destination tonight felt like a tiny ray of hope.
He pulled his eyes off the traffic for a moment. “What’s going on with you?”
“I’m pleased you said yes tonight, that’s all.”
“No, it’s not. I know you, so out with it.”
“Well, now that you ask,” she admitted with a shy smile.
“Is it the store?”
“In a way,” Gwendolyn replied.
The week someone broke into Chez Gwendolyn, a producer on the new Marx Brothers movie sent his secretary for “a bottle of that Sunset Strip stuff.” Three days later, a snappily dressed gent in charge of screen tests at Fox walked in. He said he’d recently encountered a starlet wearing a most arresting perfume and asked her where she got it.
The very next day, a trio of women came in, each flaunting the black-coffee-for-breakfast sleekness of ex-showgirls who’d made good by marrying front-office yes-men. The one with the flaming Maureen O’Hara hair announced that she’d heard about Sunset Boulevard, and squealed when Gwendolyn wafted it under her nose. The three of them ran her ragged with fittings for everything from hats to gloves, blouses to evening gowns. Two hours and four bottles of Sunset Boulevard later, they exited amid a tumult of air kisses, darlings, and checks totaling fifteen hundred dollars.
She had been waiting for the right moment to tell Marcus about Zap, but she felt it was cruel to
talk about it while he was still piecing himself together.
The first inkling that Zap looked at her as more than just a client came the day after the first shipment of Sunset Boulevard. He sent her an extravagant bouquet of tulips in a wicker basket backed with peacock feathers. Attached was a note saying how deeply he’d enjoyed working with her.
The next week, a messenger delivered a pair of pearl drop earrings. The note attached assured her that he was sending them “for no other reason but that they’d look heavenly on those exquisite lobes of yours.”
Then he asked her to be his guest at the final episode of The Fred Allen Show, which was ending its eighteen-year run; it was black tie and invitation only. His last-minute request implied he hadn’t given it much forethought, but the way he pressed his hand into the small of her back as they located their seats caused her to wonder if she was heading for trouble. After all, he was born the year she entered junior high.
Halfway through that broadcast, he inched his leg rightward until his knee touched hers. He applied a gentle probing pressure, pressing his thigh, then his calf against hers. She felt the heat of his leg through her stocking, and when she felt his elbow press against hers, she was running short of breath.
By the time the DeMarco Sisters were singing “Doin’ What Comes Natur’ly,” neither Gwendolyn nor Zap were paying much attention. They barely exchanged a word as he drove them up Beachwood Canyon and into a secluded cul-de-sac.
After an hour of enthusiastic necking, they drove into Hollywood for cheeseburgers at Simon’s Drive-In. She waited until the last of the fries were gone, then admitted that she was “steaming toward forty.” His response—“You’re the type of woman who’ll still be turning heads at seventy”—sounded sincere enough to warrant a second date.
A week later they were snuggled into a booth at the Formosa Café, after which they indulged in a session of window fogging while parked on Mulholland Drive overlooking the lights of Universal Studios.
She promised herself they wouldn’t go all the way until they’d had at least three dates, although she wasn’t entirely sure why. It wasn’t like she didn’t know her way around a man’s body. A pretty girl at the Garden of Allah was rarely the cloistered type.
Twisted Boulevard: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 6) Page 16