Kathryn knew Hughes better than Marcus did, so he’d prevailed on her to make the call. When she reported back that Hughes had agreed to see him, she reminded Marcus that he now eschewed the practice of shaking hands.
When Hughes saw Marcus approach, he nodded, but made no effort to stand. He pointed to one of the three chairs in front of his desk. “I can give you seven minutes.”
Suspecting this might be the case, Marcus had rehearsed a tight pitch. It highlighted the aviation aspects of the project and included enough technical jargon to thrill the pilot in his audience of one. Hughes said nothing as Marcus moved through the story, but from the tics that twitched Hughes’ pale and marred face, Marcus could see he’d hit the mark.
“The final shot,” he concluded, “is Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E flying over a vast and empty ocean—and into history.”
Without realizing it, Marcus had worked his way to the edge of the seat. He slid back and waited for a response.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“I love it,” Hughes declared. “Great story. Great idea. Great job, Adler. Absolutely first rate.”
Breathless with anticipation, Marcus pushed out, “Thank you. I appreciate that.” He reached into his briefcase and extracted the outline.
Hughes’s face clouded over. “But I can’t make it.”
“You just said—”
“A movie like that will have to pass the Breen Office.”
Marcus gripped the armrests. “I am very familiar with every single rule in the Hays Code, and I can assure you there is nothing in this story that contravenes them.” He tried to push the outline across the desk, but Hughes waved it away.
“I know who you are, and what you’re capable of. That’s not why I’m saying no.”
I knew I shouldn’t have counted on this. I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away. I’m not back on square one, because I never damn well left it.
It took some effort to look at Hughes in the eye again. “Why are you knocking me back?”
“Because you occupy the number-one position on Joseph Breen’s personal shit list.”
Marcus took the news like a slug to the chest. “How do you know that?”
Hughes jumped out of his chair and walked over to a narrow basin Marcus hadn’t noticed. He wet his hands under the faucet and started lathering them with a fresh bar of soap. “You’ve heard of Stromboli, right?” Who hadn’t? It was the movie Ingrid Bergman left her marriage and Hollywood career to make with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. “Did you know that I secured most of the funding in exchange for distribution?”
Marcus told Hughes he wasn’t aware of that.
“Yeah, well, I did. And now I’ve got a boatload of cash tied up in that godforsaken white elephant and if I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing a dime in profits, I need Breen on my side. But now of course Bergman’s going to have Rossellini’s bastard any minute now, and Rossellini’s recruited the help of the guy who wrote the screenplay, who—wouldn’t you know it—is some sort of goddamned priest. So of course Breen just loves that. I tell you, Adler, the whole thing’s a nightmare. I can’t afford to get Breen offside—”
“But what makes you think I’m on Breen’s shit list?”
Hughes’ hands were coated in thick soapsuds. If there’d been any germs when he started, there couldn’t be any left now. He started to wash them off with the deliberation of a surgeon.
“He showed it to me. That prick has literally typed out his shit list. Can you beat that? I was in his office a couple of weeks ago about Stromboli and things became heated. We got into this argument about who’s qualified to write screenplays and who’s not, and suddenly he’s planting his shit list in front of me. I recognized your name because you’re good friends with Kathryn. Given your turn in front of HUAC a while back, I wasn’t too surprised to see your name on his list. But number one?” He let out a whistle.
“Why did you even agree to see me?” Marcus asked.
“I was intrigued.”
He grabbed a towel and started drying his hands so thoroughly that it looked like he was out to remove the top layer of skin.
Marcus grabbed the handle of his briefcase and got to his feet. “Well, thanks anyway. I appreciate your time.” Even if it was a complete waste.
“Sit down,” Hughes ordered. “I’ve got a suggestion.” He dumped the used towel in a trash can below the basin and returned to his desk. “You know who’s desperate for writers and not real particular about the whole Red Menace distraction? Television. With your experience, you’ll automatically be the most experienced guy in the room.”
Marcus didn’t have it in him to say Thanks but no thanks, so he just stared at Hughes.
“I’m friendly with the producer of Texaco Star Theater. You know, Milton Berle and all that.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It’s number one in the ratings. You’d be going into a hugely popular show. I could make a call. That’s all it’d take and you’d be hired.”
That show is sketch comedy. Hardly up my alley. At least when Reuben from down at the beach brought up television, he was talking about drama.
“I appreciate that,” Marcus said, standing. “How about I give it some thought?”
He went to offer his hand to Hughes, but at the last second remembered Kathryn’s advice, and kept the momentum going and scratched a pretend itch down his right cheek, knowing full well that he wasn’t fooling anyone.
CHAPTER 33
Kathryn wished she hadn’t volunteered for flower-arranging duty. The fluke of her successful cake-baking demonstration notwithstanding, she was about as good with flowers as she was with recipes. Surely there was somebody at the Beverly Hills Hotel who could do a far better job?
She wrapped the white silk ribbon around the neck of the small vase and tried to tie it into a bow, but the damned thing kept slipping through her fingers.
Wilkerson is sixty-one, for crying out loud. What the hell is he doing marrying a girl in her twenties? She yanked the ends of the ribbon. The bow was a bit droopy and if she had time, she’d do it over, but there were eleven more of these suckers. And what does he think this Tichi girl has that none of his previous five wives had?
Despite her misgivings, Kathryn rather liked Wilkerson’s new bride. Tichi was inappropriately young, and the fact that her mother was Wilkerson’s maid seemed indecorous, but the dark-eyed lass was smart, articulate, and approached everything she did with gusto. So when she asked Kathryn to help her with her wedding luncheon, Kathryn couldn’t say no. Especially after what had happened in Sun Valley the previous month.
Wilkerson’s involvement with Bugsy Siegel had spun out of control so badly that he’d fled to Paris until it was safe to return after a hit man gunned Siegel down in his girlfriend’s living room. That was three years ago, so Wilkerson was completely unprepared when he and Tichi were enjoying a ski vacation in Idaho and a drunken Virginia Hill approached their table, screaming accusations that Wilkerson was responsible for Siegel’s death.
Hotel security quickly bundled Hill away, but the episode shook them and Tichi wanted their wedding to go off without a hitch. Kathryn imagined it was a lot for anyone to take on, particularly for the maid’s daughter who’d married into the spotlight. Kathryn felt she couldn’t say no. And besides, a happy boss at home was a happy boss at work.
The second ribbon-tying wasn’t a great improvement over the first, but it took Kathryn half the time.
“How’s it coming?”
Kathryn hadn’t seen Tichi approach. “It’s coming. Let’s leave it at that.” She grabbed another vase and length of ribbon. “Did they put out the sign directing everyone to the Sunset Ballroom?”
“I didn’t notice it.”
“You don’t want seventy people meandering around the lobby, wondering where to go.”
“I’ll check.”
Kathryn called her back. The fascinator Tichi wore was an explosion of blue-and-
red feathers of unidentifiable origin. The colors contrasted boldly with the safe beiges and pale blues of the ballroom. It was striking, but it looked like it was about to fall off the side of her head. As Kathryn hitched it up and readjusted the clip, Tichi whispered,
“I can’t believe how nervous I am.”
“It’s your debut into Hollywood society,” Kathryn replied. “It’s natural to be jittery.”
“So many big shots!”
Kathryn placed a soothing hand on Tichi’s shoulder. “They’re just people who happen to be very successful. Now scoot out there and see if they’ve put that sign where people can see it.”
Kathryn returned to her tiny vases and decided to try holding them steady with her thighs. She extracted the bouquets of miniature tulips and gypsophila and began to test her theory while thinking about what she’d just said to the boss’s wife.
They’re not “just people” at all. They’re quagmires of neuroses and ego who assume their opinion is the only one that matters.
Her mind flew back to an incident she’d witnessed the previous week at an industry preview of Sunset Boulevard. She still couldn’t get L.B. Mayer’s reaction out of her head.
After the show, she was chatting with Edith Head and Barbara Stanwyck in the foyer when Mayer came striding across the carpet toward Billy Wilder.
“You bastard!” he screamed. “You have disgraced the industry that made you and fed you! You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood!”
Kathryn admired how Wilder kept his anger in check, replied with a curt “Fuck you!” then left the building without another word. She also couldn’t understand Mayer’s reaction.
Back in May when she visited the opulent set, she’d suspected Wilder was crafting a remarkable film, but she was unprepared for the audacious way he told such a wry and darkly comic story.
She wanted to tell Mayer to wake up. Sure, Sunset Boulevard showed audiences what happens when an adoring audience forgets its idol, but everybody knew movie stars weren’t flawless models of unimpeachable perfection, so why pretend otherwise?
Thoughts of that movie had been haunting her lately. Gwennie hinted once that maybe it was because Kathryn was forty and time was marching ever onward. And maybe that was true. Norma Desmond was supposed to be fifty, and fifty loomed disturbingly on her horizon. There was another reason though, one she hadn’t shared with anyone: that photo of her father.
She’d first put it on top of her bookcase—out of easy reach, but still in view. It stayed there for weeks until Marcus came back from the library. He’d taken copious notes that confirmed what Francine had told her.
After that, she put it in the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet.
In the limo drive home from the department store demonstration, Gwennie related her exchange with Leo Presnell. Kathryn’s knee-jerk reaction was to keep her guard up until Gwennie started talking about the guy’s sincerity. “You should give him a chance,” Gwennie told her.
So she’d wrangled him an invite to today’s luncheon to see how he handled himself among the big cheeses.
Kathryn’s improvised method of accelerated flower arranging proved a success. She finished her final vase just as the first guests—the top three members of Twentieth Century-Fox’s publicity department—wandered into the ballroom.
Soon the guests started streaming in, keeping Kathryn busy schmoozing and entertaining studio executives, a smattering of stars, and just enough regular folks like Wilkerson’s accountant and Tichi’s mother to keep it grounded. When Leo Presnell entered the ballroom, he headed straight for her.
The guy sure had good taste in clothes. His dark charcoal suit had a pinstripe so faint that it was barely noticeable unless he was close enough for her to smell that in his sandalwood aftershave. The pinstripe made him look taller than he was, and slimmer, too. It was subtle, but effective.
“Have you seen the afternoon papers?” he asked.
“I’ve spent most of the day in here.”
“Leilah O’Roarke held a press conference this morning. She’s petitioning the court to have her case dismissed on the basis of the Cohen bombing.”
Earlier that month, Los Angeles awoke to the news that a bomb exploded inside the house of Mickey Cohen in Brentwood. By sheer dumb luck, Cohen and his wife escaped unharmed, causing Cohen to brag that he was unkillable. Still, he’d hired a bodyguard, a small-time hood called Johnny Stompanato who everybody knew and nobody liked.
Leilah had done well to keep her case from going in front of a judge for this long, but now she was getting desperate. “How does she figure Cohen’s bomb and her charges are connected?”
“She says rumors have run rife that she’s responsible for the explosion, which means she can’t get an impartial jury.”
“Sounds like someone’s running out of tactics.”
Presnell’s smile dropped suddenly. “Don’t look now, but Variety’s newest columnist just walked in.”
Kathryn pulled a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. She and Tichi had gone over the guest list two days ago, and Ruby Courtland was not on it. “What’s she doing?”
“Giggling with Dore Schary and Vincente Minnelli like it’s the senior prom and they’re competing to be next on her dance card.”
“Are either of them buying it?”
“Minnelli doesn’t know where to look, but I’d say Schary’s lapping it up.”
Kathryn snuck a peek. Ruby was in a tight-waisted dress of aqua moiré silk with a matching bolero jacket designed to barely contain a bulging bosom whose sole purpose was to pull the focus of every man within fifty feet.
She turned back to Presnell. “Gwendolyn told me what you said that day at the May Company about helping me get Ruby out of the picture.”
“And I meant it.”
“Good, because now’s your chance.”
“You want me to steal behind enemy lines and reconnoiter?”
“She’s a sneaky one, so tread lightly.”
As he sauntered in and around the guests, Kathryn sought camouflage behind Howard Hawks. She was only halfway to him when a large gong resonated through the room. It was the signal that the newlyweds were arriving.
The guests turned to the double-wide front doors of the Sunset Ballroom and applauded as Billy Wilkerson and his—literally—blushing young bride paraded in. It was also the signal that the guests take their seats.
A phalanx of waiters appeared, scattering through the room, handing out champagne coupes from their trays. As soon as everyone was holding a glass, Wilkerson got to his feet.
“Welcome! Welcome! And thank you all for helping me kick off what I have no doubt will be a joyous new adventure.” He was beaming like a bridegroom at his first wedding reception, not a sixty-year-old, five-time divorcé. “As you all know, Tichi and I had a quiet civil ceremony in Phoenix last week, but somehow it didn’t seem right to not share the moment with the people I love and admire the most.”
Kathryn knew her boss well enough to know that he had already enjoyed several snorts before making his big entrance. He prattled on for a while about the joys of marriage and the “indefinable feeling of satisfaction that the right union with the right person can bring.”
Kathryn paid only intermittent attention to his long-winded soliloquy. She was too distracted by the presence of the baby elephant in a bolero jacket.
Is Leo sitting next to Ruby? He can be pretty charming when he wants to be—did he have a chance to coax her into conversation? Would she remember him? Did she see me with him? Would she be on guard?
By the time Kathryn tuned back into Wilkerson, he was starting to wrap things up. “I won’t bore you too much longer,” he said. “But I do have a couple more things to say. First, a vote of sincere thanks to my lovely new bride, who organized today’s festivities. And she tells me she couldn’t have done it on such short notice without the capable assistance of my favorite radio star, our very own Kathryn Massey.”
He asked
Kathryn to rise and acknowledge the applause he’d coaxed from the crowd.
“I want to finish by making a professional announcement. I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome to the Hollywood Reporter team a new member who I’m sure will inject a burst of excitement. Please join me in greeting our new columnist, who I’ve cunningly managed to lure away from Variety.” Kathryn’s champagne coupe almost slipped from her fingers. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of openhearted applause to Miss Ruby Courtland.”
While Ruby beamed at the crowd and waved, Kathryn scanned the room for Leo Presnell. She spotted him a table away from Ruby, looking at Kathryn, his hands raised in doleful apology. At least he was game.
She returned to Wilkerson, who was glowing as though he’d just stolen the Hope diamond out from under Harry Winston.
As long as I live, I’ll never understand how otherwise smart and clever men can be so easily bamboozled by a nice bust. And it’s not even a nice bust. It’s a pull-me-up, push-me-out, shove-me-in-your-face-so-you-can’t-look-away display of brazen trampiness.
She flagged down a waiter and took another glass of Help Me Get Through This Ordeal and drained half the glass in one gulp.
CHAPTER 34
Gwendolyn slipped her hand into Zap’s and fell in step behind his parents as they walked up the aisle. The Church of the Recessional was a simple sandstone building with a sloping roof and four pairs of stained-glass windows. When they stepped outside, Gwendolyn was surprised to see how many people had gathered to hear George Jessel’s touching eulogy over the loudspeakers. There must have been hundreds of people milling around. It was far more than what poor old D.W. Griffith got.
“How did your parents know Sid Grauman?” she asked Zap.
“Pop had a little store around the corner from the Egyptian. Uncle Sid loved Pop’s decorative glass bottles. He’d give them as gifts and people’d always ask him, ‘Sid, where did you get this gorgeous bottle?’ and he’d send them to Pop.”
Twisted Boulevard: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 6) Page 22