by Nina Revoyr
“Ah,” I said. “But where else would you find such beautiful flowers?”
“At home in Georgia,” she replied, turning back to me but looking somewhere else. “There were all different kinds of fiowers and trees. It was like the whole world was alive.”
That she called Georgia her home surprised me, for she lacked any trace of an accent. “And when were you last home?” I asked.
“Oh, too long, too long.” She sat down on the stone wall beside me. “You’re that famous Japanese actor, aren’t you? ‘The dark storm from the perfumed Orient.’ I read about you last month in Photoplay.”
I chuckled. “Well, Miss Nora, I don’t know how famous I am. But yes, I am an actor. I’m under contract here with Perennial.”
“My mother says your picture was immoral, but I rather liked it. I snuck out of the house to watch it with my friends.” She giggled, and I wondered what she was doing there at Perennial. I had no doubt which picture she was speaking of.
“Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“My mother thinks Japs shouldn’t be in pictures at all, but she says you’re a talented actor. She doesn’t like anyone very much, to tell you the truth. Especially the men who work here.” She gestured toward the offices. “She thinks they’re all crooks. She liked the people in New York much better.”
I peered at the girl more closely, thinking now that she looked familiar. She must have been sixteen or seventeen, although she acted more like twelve. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Nora,” she repeated, as if the whole matter of names was tiresome. “Nora Niles.” Then she looked into my face and said, “My, Mr. Nakayama, you’re lovely.”
Although she said this with genuine feeling, I knew at once that her words were innocent. She was simply expressing her appreciation for my objective appeal, as if I were one of the fiowers she had plucked from the garden. In fact, just as my mind had formulated that analogy, she extended the hand that held the bouquet. “Here. I think you should have these.”
“Oh, thank you, Miss Niles, but I’d rather you keep them. They’re delightful, more befitting a lady.”
“All right.” The girl sighed and cast her eyes to the ground, and I was afraid that I had injured her feelings. But when she spoke again, the fiowers had gone from her mind. “It’s so nice to talk to people. There are so few lovely people in the world.”
I considered her more closely—her blushed, rounded cheeks, her full lips, the irrepressible dark hair—and was certain now that I had seen her before. How I knew her— and who she was—struck me at precisely the moment that a high, shrill voice split the afternoon tranquility. “Nora!”
I turned around to look for the source of the voice, while the girl just kept her eyes on the ground.
“Nora, you come over here right now!”
Reluctantly, still not even glancing in the direction of the voice, the girl pulled herself up to her feet. But she didn’t move from her spot, and in another few seconds a woman rushed over to where we stood. My immediate impression of this woman was that she was boiling—not merely angry, but actually bubbling with anger. She had the same dark curly hair as the girl, and the same brown eyes, though hers were devoid of wonder. She grabbed the girl by the elbow and shot me a look. “You come on, Nora. It’s time to go home.”
By this point I had realized that I was talking to Nora Minton Niles, the young new actress who had signed with Perennial six months before to take the place of the departed Lola Moore. She was only sixteen when I met her that March day, and seemed much younger, though she had already appeared in six or seven films. She was there—or rather, her mother was there—to meet with studio executives; indeed, as I looked back toward where her mother had come from, I saw David Rosenberg, special assistant to the studio chief Leonard Stillman, standing at the top of the stairs.
“Mrs. Niles,” I said now, as the mother pulled her daughter along. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jun Nakayama, and I am also an actor under contract with Perennial. I suppose this makes colleagues of your daughter and me.”
The woman whipped her head around, and I was taken aback by the fury in her face. “I know exactly who you are, Mr. Nakayama. You and my daughter may work for the same studio, but you are not, in any way, colleagues. And my daughter’s name is Niles, but my own name is Cole. Mrs. Harriet Baker Cole. Now please excuse us.”
She led her daughter away, and I, along with everyone else in the courtyard, watched them go in silence. When I turned back toward the staircase, I saw Nora’s fiowers scattered all over the ground.
After the girl and her mother were out of sight, I walked over to David Rosenberg. He was a serious young man of about twenty-five, and whatever else his job description may have included, his main function appeared to be dealing with difficult people. Because his boss, Leonard Stillman, worked out of the studio’s New York headquarters, Rosenberg acted as his eyes and ears for West Coast operations. “Some piece of work, that Mrs. Cole,” he said as I approached. “You’re lucky, Jun, that you got out of there with your balls still attached.”
I stared at him, surprised. It had not occurred to me that anyone could make something of the fact that I had been talking to Miss Niles, perhaps because she seemed like such a child. “She’s very protective,” I offered.
“That’s one word for it,” said Rosenberg, drumming his fingers on his arm. “She can’t stand for men to talk to Nora—threatening her gravy train, I guess.” He tried to kick a stone in front of him and missed. David was tall, broad, slightly awkward in movement, as if he wasn’t sure his body really belonged to him. He often stood behind Stillman at public events, hovering over his much shorter boss. Now, he shook his head and chuckled. “Our first meeting, she told us she had a .38 in her handbag, just in case there was some kind of situation. Rumor is she carries a switch in her purse for when Nora gets out of line.” He tried for the rock again and connected this time; it went skittering off the top of the stairs. “She just screamed at us for an hour about how ‘limited’ the girl’s contract was, and it’s the biggest first-time contract we’ve ever offered. We shouldn’t be surprised at anything that woman does, though. She’d sue her own mother if it meant better terms.”
“I actually thought the girl was quite charming,” I countered.
“Sure she is,” said Rosenberg. “Nora’s a good kid. A little strange, but totally genuine.” He shook his head. “We were in a meeting last month and I said to her, I said, ‘Nora, you’re set to do ten pictures in the next eleven months. We’re glad you’re so ambitious.’ And she gave me that sad sweet smile of hers and said, ‘I’m not ambitious at all, Mr. Rosenberg. My mother is ambitious for me.’”
Over the next several months, as Nora Minton Niles appeared in one film after another, I learned more about her background. Nora’s family, as she had told me, was from a small town in Georgia, where her mother had appeared in local stage productions. No one seemed to know what had become of the father. What they did know was that several years before they came to Los Angeles, Harriet Cole and Nora had moved up to New York. There, Nora had starred in a series of small plays, and then bigger theater productions, before being discovered by a talent scout for Metro Pictures. In 1917, when I met her, Nora had been in California for less than a year. She lived with her mother and grandmother in a small house in Hancock Park; the famous mansion, which later attracted so many curiosity-seekers, would not be built until 1920. And from that house, her mother orchestrated every detail of her career.
Theories about Harriet Cole abounded. Some thought she was simply the kind of pushy stage parent who would soon become so common in Hollywood; some saw her as a frustrated former actress who was living out her dream through her daughter. It was rumored, too, that the name “Nora Minton Niles” actually belonged to the actress’s dead cousin, and that Harriet had stolen it—along with the accompanying birth certificate—to add five years to her daughter’s age so that the Gerry Society would
not stop her from working in New York. Nobody knew what Nora’s real name was, nor her mother’s, and nobody dared to ask. Nobody bothered to ask Nora much of anything. It was Harriet who was Nora’s public face; it was Harriet who always spoke for her; it was even Harriet who collected all her daughter’s checks, since Nora was still legally under her mother’s care. Later, given all that eventually transpired, I would wonder if Nora had even wanted to be an actress, or if she was simply carrying out the desires of an unfulfilled woman who would sacrifice everything, including her daughter, to get what she wanted.
But as I sit here this evening with Bellinger’s script, I know that this train of thought is ultimately useless. It may be true, on purely theoretical terms, that Nora had the appropriate blend of dreaminess and sadness to play the role of Diane Marbury. Yet Nora has been out of pictures for as long as I have, and she is by now an old woman. Bellinger and Perennial will surely seek a contemporary actress, someone versed in the modern ways of filmmaking. And such a choice would of course be appropriate. No doubt I am thinking of Nora because my mind has been wandering back of late to my own career in pictures. No doubt it is natural for my thoughts to settle on a familiar actress, despite the awkwardness that colors all my memories of her.
But perhaps, upon further reflection, Nora Niles would have been too young to play the role of Diane, even at the height of her fame. Nora was only twenty-one, after all, when the events occurred that drove her from the screen altogether. She never got a chance to play anything but spirited children and sad young teens. She wasn’t in pictures long enough to play a true adult.
CHAPTER SIX
October 13, 1964
Last Saturday, as usual, I met Mrs. Bradford for breakfast. Outside of monthly meetings with my property management firm, these breakfasts are my only consistent appointments. I don’t mean to give the impression that I am lacking for things to do; in fact, I often attend the symphony or the theater. I also hold memberships to several museums, which I visit when there are notable exhibits. Moreover, I dine out several evenings a week, and I even—before I began to tire so easily on long drives—took frequent trips to Santa Barbara or the mountains.
Almost always, I undertake these excursions alone. There is something to be said for experiencing great art, or nature, by oneself; the absence of other people makes the enjoyment more pure, and one’s perceptions grow acute and discerning. And certainly it is easier to make arrangements for one, as nobody else’s requirements or whims can ever affect my plans. Nonetheless, I cannot deny that it is pleasant to occasionally partake in the company of others. This is why my regular meals and conversations with Mrs. Bradford have come to be so agreeable.
We have tried many different establishments in the Hollywood area, both classic diners like the Silver Spoon on Hollywood Boulevard and newer restaurants on Vermont and Santa Monica, but the place we have settled on as our mutual favorite is a quiet, older restaurant on La Brea. The proprietor, a Mr. Earhardt, makes superb spinach omelets, and I look forward to his cooking all week. That particular morning, Mrs. Bradford wanted to meet later than usual, which gave me time to visit my barber. My hair had started to look somewhat untidy; indeed, the previous Saturday Mrs. Bradford had joked that I would soon fit in with the scruffy youths out on the Boulevard.
I entered the restaurant a few minutes early and found Mrs. Bradford already seated at the window table. She was wearing a yellow and white striped blouse and new white tennis shoes, and she seemed, as always, more youthful than her age. It is not that Mrs. Bradford looks younger than her sixty-some years; her hair is silver and there are wrinkles on her face and hands. But there is an alertness in her posture, a quickness, a perpetual brightness in her eyes, that makes it seem as if she is always poised for an adventure.
She greeted me warmly as I sat down, and as soon as I ordered my food, she launched into an involved story about the raccoon fight she’d broken up in her garden the previous evening. I tried to give the impression that I was following her story, but she must have sensed that my mind was elsewhere, for she stopped in mid-sentence and looked at me.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Nakayama? You don’t seem to be with me this morning.”
I apologized and explained that I had been busy all week, and was still rather preoccupied.
“Is it because of the reporter? You met him this week, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “As it so happens, I did meet the young man. Twice, in fact. And I read several of his pieces. They’re very good.”
“Did you like him? Did you grant him an interview?”
“I did like him. He knew a great deal about the silent film era, and it appears he will be writing about me.” I considered telling her about Perennial and the possible movie role, but it felt too premature. It would inspire a rash of questions from her, I suspected, and more interest than I could cope with at the moment. My feeling was only confirmed when Mrs. Bradford smiled and said, “So now you have someone paying attention to you. No wonder you got a haircut.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “My hair was getting long.”
“Yes, but people often take better care of themselves when they want to impress somebody.”
“Perhaps,” I said, attempting to quell my irritation. “But that’s not the case where Mr. Bellinger’s concerned. Besides, for all you know, I could be trying to impress you.”
This caught her off guard, and she laughed a bit, but it had the intended effect. When she spoke again, she addressed a different topic. “It must be strange to revisit that part of your life after all of these years.”
“Yes, in fact, it is rather odd.”
“You know, I’m dying to see one of your movies. Do you still have them around somewhere?”
I gave a short laugh. “No, I believe they have all been lost, and if any do remain, I do not possess them.”
“What a shame. There must be some, somewhere.” She brightened. “What about old photographs or movie magazines?”
“What about them?”
“Well, I’d love to read about you, silly. And maybe see some old photos.”
“I do have some of those things, but they have all been put away.”
“What do you mean, ‘put away’? Can’t you find them?”
“It would be a great deal of trouble.”
“Well, I don’t see why.”
I sighed. “I’m afraid they’re all in storage, Mrs. Bradford.”
She did not respond for a moment, and then an unusually serious expression came over her face. “Mr. Nakayama, you never told me why you stopped.”
“Stopped what?”
“You know what I mean. Stopped making films. You were a huge star with a fiourishing career, and then suddenly nothing.”
I thought carefully before I replied. “I was one of the casualties of sound. Once voices came into film, I, along with many of my peers, was finished.”
“But Mr. Nakayama,” she said gently, “talkies didn’t become the standard until 1929. Your last movie was in 1922.”
I kept my eyes on the table. “Things were changing very rapidly then. There came a time when it was clear I could not continue.”
“Was it racism? I know there was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment at that time. It’s really kind of amazing that you got to be as famous as you did. It couldn’t have been easy to be an Oriental man in Hollywood.”
“On the contrary,” I said. “For a large part of my career, Japanese art and culture were held in high esteem in America. They were seen as the epitome of refinement and class, and movies dealing with Japan were very popular.”
“Yes, but still, there was all that agitation about property and citizenship. California didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for Japanese people.”
I took a sip of my tea and measured my words carefully. “One can always find prejudice if one specifically looks for it. But that was not the reason for my retirement.”
“You didn’t kill anybody, did yo
u?”
I was so startled by this question that I looked up at her face and was relieved to see that she had been joking. “Of course not. Mrs. Bradford, what made you think of such a thing?”
She took her napkin out from under the silverware, shook it, and placed it on her lap. “Well, from reading all those histories when I was trying to find out about you, I learned that there were a couple of big scandals. There was the Fatty Arbuckle situation, which I knew about already, but there was also the murder of the British director, Ashley Bennett Tyler. If I remember correctly, he directed you in some of your films. And isn’t it true they never caught the killer?”
I was taken aback by her questions—I hadn’t known she had done so much research. And I did not then, or at any time, wish to talk about Ashley Tyler. “Yes, he did direct me. And yes, it is true that they never caught the killer.”
“There were suspicions, right? But never a formal charge?”
I forced a smile. “You’ve been doing your homework, Mrs. Bradford.”
“Well, it was strange to me that the Arbuckle case is still remembered today, but this one, it’s just disappeared.” She leaned over the table, and I saw the same excitement in her eyes that I’d seen in Bellinger’s when he talked about his film. “Mr. Nakayama, you were around when all of this happened. Do you know who killed Ashley Tyler?”
I gave a light laugh, which belied the sudden churning in my stomach. “Of course not, Mrs. Bradford. My dealings with Mr. Tyler were purely professional. I could not imagine why anyone would do such a thing, and I certainly don’t know who was involved.”
Mercifully, our omelets arrived and Mrs. Bradford dropped the subject. I had lost my appetite, however, and only took a bite or two of my eggs. Mrs. Bradford did not seem to notice. She chattered on about the novel she was reading, and about the status of her garden. And although I kept expecting her to bring up the Tyler case again, she did not return to that uncomfortable topic.