by Anne Girard
“Not sure how properly,” she tried to joke. “But yes, sir.”
She then let the production assistant lead her into the backseat of the prop taxicab that had been brought onto the soundstage. She sank comfortably against the leather seat as the lighting was adjusted and the cast moved into position.
Babe was doing most of the scene with her so she sat forward in the seat and watched him as the scene opened. Harlean struggled not to laugh at their skilled antics. Choreographed or not, they were hilarious, and she so respected them for their talent. The first time on film she was going to have a real chance to show Foster, and Mr. Roach, too, when he saw the dailies, what she could do. She was terrified and thrilled at the same time and her heart raced with the anticipation.
With cameras rolling, the car was drawn forward by a pulley and she was helped out by Stan and Babe. Both were in full slapstick mode. It was not at all easy to keep a straight face. From here on out, just as she had in her fleeting scene with Jeanette MacDonald, Harlean meant to make her moment count. It was the only way to build a real career.
The first bit was that Stan would close the car door on the length of her skirt, thereby ripping it off without her knowing as the two of them moved forward toward the hotel entrance. Then she was to strut into the hotel on Babe’s arm without realizing what the audience was seeing of her from behind. Harlean did her best vampy stride.
“Cut!”
She knew the bark had come from George Stevens, the cinematographer, because he had such a deep, forboding tone. Harlean and Babe both stopped cold, and turned slowly back around. Stevens and Foster were charging toward them and chaos erupted as the rest of the cast and crew fell into fits of murmurs and laughter.
“For Christ’s sake, Lewis, her bare ass comes straight through the camera lens! What the hell were you thinking, Harlow?”
Harlean’s heart sank. She didn’t understand—and she was horrified.
“Someone go get Roach, will ya. He’ll probably want us to reshoot the entire damn scene,” Foster groaned.
Harlean glanced at Babe. Tears pricked her eyes.
“No one told me she’d be naked under that flimsy thing,” she heard the actor who played the desk clerk say. “I could see her tits and everything else. I know my mouth fell wide-open when I saw her. They won’t want that on film,” he chuckled.
“Where the hell is your underdress?” Stevens angrily asked her.
She fought back the tears but they came anyway, running in ribbons down her cheeks. Her voice was shallow and she could barely force herself to speak. “Mr. Foster asked me if I was underdressed and so I thought...well, I mean... I told him yes, because I don’t wear undergarments as a rule.”
Lewis Foster’s tone went lower. He was visibly irritated. “Miss Harlow, underdressed is a term for the nude undergarment that goes beneath a revealing costume in this business. How on earth could you not be aware of that?”
She glanced helplessly at Babe, who could only offer her a grim hint of a smile and a shrug as Hal Roach himself now approached. An assistant director was speaking to him, presumably explaining the situation.
When she looked at Roach, however, her sense of panic turned to confusion. She saw that, unlike everyone else, he was actually smiling.
“Someone take Miss Harlow to Wardrobe and get her some undergarments. You boys all right to do the scene again, same way?” he asked Laurel and Hardy.
“No problem,” Babe replied.
“Sure,” Stan seconded.
As Harlean was escorted to the wardrobe department by a production assistant, she was not certain if she felt more foolish for misunderstanding or more grateful for Roach’s apparent sense of humor. This was a complicated industry, and an even more complicated world for a seventeen-year-old girl from Missouri. But this setback only made her more determined than ever to learn from each experience, especially the bad ones, and to thrive.
She would not be the second Jean Harlow to return to Kansas City in defeat.
Ten minutes later, her spirit renewed, she returned to the set in her black teddy, the pull-away skirt and the fancy black buckle shoes that her mother had brought out to California for her. She had wiped away her tears, pinched her cheeks and painted a cheerful smile back on. The actors took their places and Harlean slipped back into the prop cab.
“Quiet on the set!”
The camera began rolling. She glanced heavenward and said a silent prayer. Once again Stan Laurel helped her from the backseat, mugging and hamming it up with Babe, as they brought her into their routine.
To her surprise, Harlean could see, from the corner of her eye, the broad smiles from the crew who stood gathered just off camera.
With her confidence newly bolstered, she hammed it up even more expertly in this take, waiting for Stan to take off his coat to cover her. When the scene ended, the cast and crew broke into applause.
“That was great, honey,” Stan quietly said. “Even better than the first time.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Trust us, you’re a natural, Sunshine.” Babe smiled. “I hear we’ll see you back at work here with us on Monday. We are starting Bacon Grabbers. Heck of a title. That one should be a kick.”
She giggled at the silly title, too, but she loved the idea of how these comic pictures made people laugh and forget their troubles for a while, and she was happy now to be even a small part of their genius. Harlean wasn’t certain she could be any happier than she was at this moment, doing something she loved, with people she so admired. Life’s road was certainly full of twists and turns but she had really begun to enjoy the ride. There was no part of any of it she was ready to give up on just yet.
* * *
“Cover your eyes, and no peeking!” Chuck said as he led her out the front door of their house and across the lawn Sunday morning.
He seemed so happy that it lightened Harlean’s mood, and she pushed everything else to the back of her mind. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
When they reached the curb, he gently pulled her hand away from her eyes. The sun was shining brightly down on them. There, before her, was a glistening maroon LaSalle convertible coupe, the hood tied up with a giant red bow. She looked at Chuck quizzically.
“What’s this?”
“Your new car, silly. I can’t bum rides from Ivor every day.” He offered up the key. “I hope the color is okay. There weren’t a lot of choices this time of year,” he said with the charming grin of his.
“It’s too extravagant, Chuck.”
“Not for my doll.”
Harlean let him kiss her deeply then, which was the first time in a very long time, after what had happened in San Francisco and the tension between them that had followed. She understood why he had really bought the car for her. It was more peace offering than practical gift because he felt the estrangement between them just as much as she did. She had considered leaving him a dozen times just since Christmas but the words For better or for worse still pressed heavily on her heart. If she had enough stubborn resolve to make a career out of nothing, she told herself that she was foolish not to try a little longer to save her marriage.
“The car is beautiful,” she finally said.
“It’s okay, then?”
“It’s way too grand, but it’s perfect, Chuck, it really is.”
He kissed her so tenderly again that it made her remember what she had felt in those lovely first days here. It was followed by a rush of sadness that it simply wasn’t the same now.
“I wanted you to have your own transportation so you could come and go as you please. But I also needed to try to begin to make amends for what happened in that hotel. The hold on your heart your mother has just scares me sometimes. It makes me a little crazy, it really does.”
&nbs
p; At least he was admitting what she had already known, which helped a little. “I can love two people, Chuck.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what got into me, Harlean, I swear I don’t. Sometimes I just love you so much that I can’t tell where I end and you begin, and it scares me to death. You’re in my blood, doll, in my soul, and every other part of me.”
He reached up and anchored his palms on her chin. “Things are gonna be different from now on, I promise.”
She offered up a tepid smile since it was still all she could enlist, and she wondered if that was a promise he had any possible way of keeping.
That afternoon, they decided to test the new car with a tour out to Long Beach to at last introduce Chuck to her aunt Jetty. Jetta Belle Chadsey was actually her mother’s aunt but her connection with her niece’s daughter was no less enduring.
Harlean remained so plagued with conflicting feelings about her marriage—and frustration over her fear of speaking about it with her mother—that a test drive seemed as good an excuse as any to spend time, at last, with a woman whose opinion she greatly valued—a woman in whom she had confided already and who would keep her confidence.
Harlean adored the boisterous, spirited woman who she hadn’t seen since the last time she had lived in Hollywood but with whom she spoke often by phone. She really didn’t have a good excuse, other than the distractions of a young marriage and life in the city, for not having visited sooner but she knew Jetty wouldn’t require one.
Tall, thickly-set and silver-haired, Aunt Jetty met them on the front porch of her shingled beachside bungalow with a warm smile as Harlean climbed the porch steps first, holding Oscar under one arm. Jetta was the family renegade who’d had a baby and been divorced by the age of eighteen, then gone on to live with another man.
“Oh, let me look at you!” she exclaimed after they had embraced and she then held Harlean out at arm’s length. “Lord, if you aren’t a grown woman now, and a gorgeous one, too!”
“She does take your breath away, doesn’t she?” Chuck said with a proud smile as he stood on the porch step below Harlean. He then took Oscar from her so the two women could have their reunion.
“So you’re Chuck,” Aunt Jetty said a moment later as she gave Oscar’s head a little pat. “Good to finally meet you, my boy. The Baby here has told me an awful lot about you over the phone.”
“Then it’s good to know I’m still welcome here,” he quipped.
“Just mind your p’s and q’s and you always will be,” she quickly returned, and added a firm nod before she led them into her quaint living room. It was a mix of lacy curtains, tattered furniture and hurricane-style lamps painted with flowers. She left the front door open to let in the unseasonably warm winter ocean breeze.
Just as they sat down, a sleek Persian cat with bright blue eyes came seemingly out of nowhere, hopped onto Harlean’s lap, nestled in and began to purr.
“Well, now, will you look at that,” Jetty chuckled. “That sweet ol’ boy doesn’t come around for just anybody.”
“My wife has a way with all the boys,” Chuck mused as he stroked Oscar, who was contented in the crook of his arm, and Harlean was relieved when she realized he meant the comment in a lighthearted manner.
Jetty poured them each a glass of lemonade from a glass pitcher.
“So, now, tell me everything about the picture business. How exciting that all is!”
“She’s just an extra,” Chuck interjected. “It can’t be all that exciting.”
“But Mommie and Marino think it’s going to become a lot more if I keep at it. I’ve gotten to work with that new young actress people are talking about, Jeanette MacDonald so far, and my second short with Laurel and Hardy comes out tomorrow. It’s just a little part, but I think it’s really funny.”
“It’s going to play out here, right over at the Regal. I’ll be there with my bells on. Looking forward to it, sweetie.”
“I’ve learned so much already about timing from Mr. Hardy. He’s so generous with his advice.”
“Good thing that Hardy is so damn fat or a man could get pretty jealous of how often you go on about him.”
“Good gracious, Chuck.” Jetty gave him a heavy nicotine chuckle. “I know you’re a young fella and all, but take a word of advice from old Aunt Jetty, any colt like this pretty one here is gonna bolt if you pull the reins too tight.”
He shot Harlean a sheepish glance. “I believe my wife used a similar phrase not so long ago. Guess I should take your advice.”
“Guess you should,” Jetty said before she turned to Harlean. “So, child, how is your mother?”
“And we were having such a nice visit,” Chuck deadpanned.
Harlean glowered. “Not here, too, Chuck, please.”
Aunt Jetty looked at each of them in turn. “All right, you kids, out with it.”
“I am not saying anything unkind about your niece, Miss Jetty,” Chuck replied.
“For a change you’re not,” Harlean muttered.
“Well, now, I know my niece can be difficult sometimes...”
“Isn’t that just an understatement.”
“So much for promises.”
“I’m sorry. Change of subject.”
“Look, you two, you kids are crazy in love. Any fool could see that a mile away, so I’m going to tell you a story. I loved a man like that once. More passion between us than common sense, that was for damn sure. We broke all the rules. We argued, we battled, we loved... He wasn’t my husband. Wasn’t anyone my mother, or anybody else, approved of since he was an Osage Indian. Can you just imagine, in our little bitty town? Everyone was against us right from the start.”
Harlean knew the story and that it had not ended well but she let Jetty tell it anyway. After leaving her husband for him, Jetty had borne her lover twins. She had endured the ruthless small-town scrutiny, and the cruel rejection by her family, but the babies had died anyway. Her love affair died with them.
When she looked at Harlean and Chuck, there were tears shining in her eyes.
“Don’t let anybody steal your dream, you two. Not anybody. You fight for it, both of you—learn from your mistakes. And, for goodness sake, be kind to one another.”
Later, as Chuck took Oscar for a walk before the car ride back to the city, Jetty and Harlean stood alone in the kitchen.
“How are things really, sweetie?”
“Oh, Aunt Jetty, if I only knew,” Harlean sighed. “One day I think we’re going to make it through this and then he goes and says something to stir it all up again. I know we’re young, and that we made a vow. That means something to me, it really does, and I’m trying so hard to honor it. But sometimes I get scared that we won’t grow beyond this phase, that I’ll have to live the rest of my life never knowing when he’s gonna explode next. He’s been walking on eggshells with me since San Francisco but he’s so jealous all the time and he’s got so much anger inside of him.”
“Because of his parents?”
“I don’t know, probably. He won’t talk about them.”
She shook her head. “Oh, child, that sadness has got to go somewhere...”
“I’ve tried to get him to face it, Jetty, but it only makes him more angry.”
“And it makes him drink more,” she said knowingly. “Well, you’re not his savior, all you can be is the best partner to him you know how.”
“But what if that’s not enough?” Harlean asked desperately as she pressed her face into her hands for a moment.
But Jetty didn’t answer that, she didn’t need to, because they both knew the answer.
Harlean carried that exchange in her heart on the long, silent car ride back to Beverly Hills. In one arm she held her sleeping dog, and the other hand she rested on Chuck’s knee as they sat in the shiny new car that, for
a moment earlier today, had symbolized a new chapter between them.
Yet her touch, a desperate one, felt to her like their only connection just now and she had no idea at all how to change that.
Chapter Twelve
The gilded movie theater, with its burgundy velvet draperies framing the stage, was crowded for a weeknight in February. Harlean insisted they sit downstairs in the back near the exit and enter only after the lights had already been lowered for the first showing of the short she had made with Laurel and Hardy. As the music began, her heart started to race. She had never seen herself on-screen for more than an instant, here or there. She squirmed against her velvet seat cushion as the curtains parted. Then she slithered down farther into the seat, unable to stop herself.
Her mother, sitting with Marino in the row behind her and Chuck, swatted her shoulder. Harlean quickly perked back up as Babe Hardy began the on-screen routine. Stan Laurel joined him in one of their delightfully slapstick romps. Harlean remembered every moment of the filming, what they’d said, the murmured jokes they made back and forth, and how hard she had struggled not to laugh.
She vacillated between pressing her hand over her eyes, and peeking through parted fingers, and then she squirmed again. She was reassured by the laughter around her. Chuck clutched her hand, then ran his thumb soothingly over hers. This was going to be all right, she told herself. It was just a short, after all.
And then she watched more closely as the car pulled forward into the shot. She saw herself in the backseat which made her cringe. She bit down onto her knuckle. Why had she slumped like that? A gust of self-criticism rushed at her. She resolved to watch that next time.
She held her breath as she watched Stan help her out of the prop car. Chuck squeezed her hand again. Stan slammed the car door, and her dress tore away. The crowd pealed with laughter at a damsel’s predicament. Then, as the camera focused in on their backsides, with Harlean wearing only her black teddy, black stockings and high heels, two women in front of her gasped. They weren’t laughing. She heard murmurs around her and felt the blossom of a shiver. The laughter that lingered was fully male, which made it seem more tawdry to her.