Tinseltown Confidential

by Martin Turnbull

  “Miss Massey.” It was neither a question nor a statement, but more of an expression of disbelief.

  He stepped aside to usher her into his office. It was a decent size, and filled with the usual filing cabinets and stacks of paper. It could have been an insurance office on the outskirts of Omaha. She took a seat on one side of his desk as he took the other.

  He said, “You mentioned some sort of interview?”

  “That’s right. You see, it occurred to me that you’ve spent nearly twenty years saying ‘No!’ to Hollywood, but nobody’s thought to ask you how you feel about what you do. I want to hear your point of view.”

  His vacant expression didn’t change. “My point of view about what?”

  “Everything. The Hays Code and how you interpret it, how it’s changed over the years, how you see your role in the film industry and by extension, modern culture at large.”

  It was this type of “big picture” article that Wilkerson wanted from Kathryn now that Mike Connolly was covering the bitchy gossip. When Kathryn begrudgingly admitted to Gwendolyn that Connolly had a clever, albeit irritatingly self-satisfied, way of writing about the who’s-doing-what-to-who side of the business, Gwendolyn suggested that perhaps he was forcing her to up her game. It took Kathryn a couple of days to realize Gwennie was right, which is why she was sitting in Breen’s unremarkable office.

  Breen’s thin lips soured at the corners. “Don’t you people talk to each other?”

  “Which people?”

  “You and Mr. Connolly.”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “He was here yesterday. Called for an interview, just like you did.”

  Kathryn folded up her notepad. “May I ask what he wanted?”

  “He asked me what I thought about this march that Sheldon Voss will be mounting this summer.”

  What did that have to do with the adulterous movie stars Connolly was supposed to be writing about? “He did?”

  “I’m Catholic. So is Mike.”

  The switch from “Connolly” to “Mike” wasn’t lost on Kathryn.

  Breen started threading a Chesterfield through his fingers without lighting it. “And Voss’ style of firebrand fundamentalism appeals to us both. He and I have much in common.” He made a show of consulting his watch. “I’m sorry, Miss Massey, but Mike Connolly has beaten you to the punch. As I’m sure you can appreciate, I am a very busy man.”

  He raised his hand toward the door.

  * * *

  The drive back to the office gave Kathryn a chance to think through what had happened.

  She had to admit she didn’t hate Connolly as much as she’d expected to when he joined the staff four months ago. He had trained his incisive wit to titillate, but knew when to retreat.

  With a couple of Friday-night-after-work drinks inside him, he was funny as blazes. That is, until the third scotch.

  It was almost chemical. Jekyll and Hyde in a crystal tumbler.

  He’d drop his guard and ogle a handsome patron across the bar. And his droll humor disintegrated into bitter invective he aimed at anyone who wandered into his sight. By the fourth drink, he was merciless; by the fifth, he was a mess.

  Kathryn turned into the parking lot. And this guy is Catholic? As in “Holy Father” and “Thou shalt not” and “Bless me for I have sinned”? Kathryn couldn’t imagine Mike Connolly voluntarily walking into a confessional, unless maybe he had three slugs of Johnny Walker under his belt and the priest looked like Montgomery Clift.

  When she walked into the clattering newsroom, she bee-lined for Connolly’s desk.

  “I’ve just come from seeing Breen,” she told him.

  He unwrapped a piece of Juicy Fruit and flicked it into his mouth. “Oh, yeah?”

  She planted both hands on the side of his desk and bent forward. “I thought you were supposed to cover the gossip, and leave the big issues to me.”

  “That’s right. Nothing’s changed.” His response was a little too breezy.

  “And whose camp does the Sea to Shining Sea March fall into?”

  “Voss’ march isn’t showbiz related, so I figured you wouldn’t care.”

  “Then why do you?”

  “Because I’m diehard Irish-Catholic. So’s Breen, so I figured I’d get his take on it. Why the hell are you looking at me like I just ran over your cat?”

  “I had an idea for an editorial, but you’d already beaten me to it, so I just ended up looking like a dumb cluck.”

  “You should support it, you know.”

  “Support what?”

  “Voss and his Sea to Shining Sea.”

  “Why would I do that? You heard the guy—he thinks Hollywood’s a cesspit of Commies and deviants. We know that’s not true.”

  “Do we?”

  “Why would I support that nutcase’s attempts to exploit the people who work in the movie business?”

  Connolly scoffed. “I’ve never met him, so who knows if he’s a nutcase or the next Billy Graham. But he is rallying a groundswell. You know he’s making twelve stops, right?”

  “So?”

  “Twelve, as in twelve stations of the cross. Of course, I’m not the one with a national radio show and ratings to think about. But if I were, I’d be cogitating on how I could use this. I don’t know how you got Sinatra, but I heard the ratings went through the roof.”

  Kathryn had been jittery about having Sinatra on live, but he’d arrived sober and prepared. He was note-perfect, and his comedy skit with Betty Hutton broke the audience up so wildly that the listeners at home were treated to seventy-one continuous seconds of nonstop laughter. Kathryn heard later it was a record for the station and the suits were almost peeing themselves with glee.

  But like the New York broadcast, the triumph was a one-off. Kathryn needed to bring in consistently high ratings. Her show was still in the top ten, but sat around the number seven or eight mark. She needed something only radio could provide, and Mike Connolly just handed it to her.

  * * *

  Later that night at Nickodell’s, Kathryn hadn’t realized how preoccupied she’d been until Leo tapped his spoon against her glass.

  “You want to tell me what’s on your mind, or am I supposed to play Madame Arcati and divine the answer telepathically?”

  “I’m sorry.” She dropped the steak knife she’d been using to score deep grooves in the white tablecloth. “I’ve been presented with an idea I don’t particularly like, by someone I don’t particularly care for.”

  “Are you ready to share it with me, or do you need some more time to chew it over?”

  Kathryn loved that Leo seldom rushed or pushed, and gave her the space to make her own decisions.

  She held off until the waiter cleared away their escargot. As she took him through her confrontation with Mike Connolly and his suggestion about covering the march over the summer, she could see the eagerness igniting in his eyes.

  “That’s a great idea!” he gushed. “I haven’t told you this, but the Betty Crocker guys want to relaunch their chiffon cake mix with a new box and revamped advertising. This is going to dovetail perfectly!”

  “How does a new box of cake mix dovetail with a Bible-thumping crusade?”

  “The whole Sunbeam-Crocker market is middle America and its small-town happy homemakers. You can bet most of them are regular churchgoers. The overlap is massive. Oh my God, yes, this is fantastic!”

  “Does it not concern you that Sheldon Voss is a crook and a charlatan, and that his march is just a big hoax to swindle money from unsuspecting little lambs?”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  Kathryn went to snap off a caustic retort, but forced it back. She hadn’t told Leo that Voss was a blood relative.

  After coming across that Washington Post article at the Bogie and Bacall party, Kathryn asked Marcus if they could meet with the private eye who’d tracked down Oliver after he’d disappeared.

  She wasn’t terribly impressed with Dudley Hartman a
t first. He struck her as altogether too genial, like the uncle about whom everyone says, “Doesn’t he remind you of Burl Ives?” But Marcus insisted Hartman knew what he was doing, so she hired him to dig into Uncle Sheldon.

  It took him several weeks to confirm that Francine’s information was on the money: the petty theft and small-time cons that led Sheldon in and out of jails across more than a dozen states. Cunningly, Sheldon had built his reputation on being open about his dubious past, using it as proof of his redemption. On the walls of his revival tents, he hung “redemption boards” that listed the people and organizations he had grifted. Moreover, he had paid back every one with the donations he collected.

  Hartman told her, “This is one slippery fish. When someone like this suddenly becomes Mister Honest Joe, it usually means he’s hiding something. It’s what magicians call misdirection. ‘Hey! Look over there while I do this over here.’ Whatever this guy is up to, you can bet your last bootstrap it’s not what he says he’s doing.”

  Kathryn stared across the table at Leo and debated whether or not this was the time to share Hartman’s findings. Leo stared back, expecting her to answer him. She realized that as much as she loved him, his loyalties were divided.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t know for sure that Voss is a crook. Let’s call it a hunch.”

  “Your hunches are usually spot on.”

  “Voss is coming here to declare war on homosexuals.”

  Leo motioned the waiter for more wine. “I’m sorry, but that sounds far-fetched.”

  “He saw how far HUAC got with Commies, and he wants to do the same with homos. He’s smart enough to dress it up like Billy Graham so nobody questions his motives.”

  “So now Billy Graham’s a big faker, too?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  A strained hush fell over the table. The waiter arrived to refresh their glasses, and they still weren’t speaking when he returned to deliver Leo’s New York steak and Kathryn’s swordfish just as June Allyson and Dick Powell made a movie-star entrance. Normally, Kathryn would make a quick table hop after they settled and ordered drinks, but tonight she wasn’t in the mood.

  As she and Leo dug into their dinners, the silence stretched thinner. Kathryn was determined not to break it—not that she had anything she could say, aside from confessing what she knew about Voss, and she wasn’t ready to do that.

  In the end, it was Leo who broke the silence.

  “Okay,” he said, “here’s what we know. Winchell is conservative, but he rarely covers religious stories. So he’s not likely to cover the march. But your show covering it has merit and it’ll let you pull ahead of Winchell. What if we hook up a line of local radio stars to take a mike into the biggest meeting at each stop? Have you noticed that Voss has scheduled them for Friday nights?”

  “Right during my slot.”

  “We can do a live hookup. Winchell won’t have that. And remember, there’s another five hundred in it for you every week your show hits the top spot.”

  “Don’t you need the approval of Mr. Sunbeam to put that sort of deal on the table?”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “The idea of my show hitting number one is all very well, but I seriously doubt—”

  “You don’t think this march will take America by storm?”

  That’s the whole problem; I fear that it will.

  “If you’re right,” Leo said, “you get the satisfaction of telling me ‘I told you so.’ If I’m right, you get everything. Either way, you win, but wouldn’t it be sweeter to finish with a huge bonus, beat Walter Winchell, and have the biggest radio show in America?”

  Of course it would, Kathryn wanted to say. She scraped some swordfish meat with her fork. I should be jumping for joy. Then why do I feel like a whore?

  CHAPTER 22

  Hell broke loose in Hollywood on a Thursday. The sky was clear and crisp, giving no indication of the coming uproar.

  For the first couple of weeks after that ugly scene with the Tinseltown Triplets, Gwendolyn opened her store each morning wondering if this was the day she’d regret choosing the right thing over the sensible thing.

  She wasn’t sure what to expect. Projectiles thrown from passing cars? Threatening telephone calls?

  But day followed day with nary a moldy tomato slamming her window. Foot traffic continued unabated, appointments for fittings were made, and perfume sales remained consistent. As February flowed into March, her apprehension faded away.

  That Thursday morning in March, Gwendolyn’s head was filled with DeMille’s latest effort, The Greatest Show on Earth, which she’d seen the previous night with Bertie and Arlene. It had broken box office records and was on track to be the highest grossing movie of the year, but Gwendolyn wasn’t sure why. She thought it was a bit overblown and ponderous, and she was still brooding over what she might have missed as she unlocked the rear door to Chez Gwendolyn and heard the telephone ringing.

  She picked up the extension on the back wall.

  “Good morning, this is—”

  “Thank God you’re there.” The caller sounded like she was gasping for air.

  “Marilyn? Is that you?”

  “Have you seen the papers?”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal. I really didn’t. But I’m positively besieged! The press. They’re all over the sidewalk in front of my hotel. I need to get out! Can I come over? They won’t think of looking for me there. I can hide in your back room until I figure out what to do.”

  Marilyn had a reputation of moving two or three times a year. “Where are you?”

  “At the Beverly Carlton on Olympic. But I can’t walk out the front door. I’m trapped!”

  “Surely they have a fire escape.”

  “I DON’T KNOW!”

  Through the line, Gwendolyn could hear a dull roar in the background. “Service elevator, maybe?”

  “Yes!” The tremble in Marilyn’s voice faded. “There’s a back alley. I think it leads to Beverly Drive.”

  “Take it and grab the first taxi you see.”

  “I’ll knock four times, pause, then twice so you’ll know it’s me.”

  Gwendolyn didn’t know why Marilyn felt a secret code was necessary until she raced to the Sunset Strip newsstand and bought copies of the Times, the Examiner, and the Hollywood Citizen-News. Slapped across all three papers was the news that Hollywood’s biggest blonde bombshell since Lana Turner had posed nude for a calendar.

  Marilyn was hardly the first actress to drop her drawers for girlie pics. But in the past, if any pics were so much as hinted at, her studio’s fixer would pay off the photographer, or go out and buy up all the copies.

  And yet here was Marilyn Monroe, Twentieth Century-Fox’s big blonde hope, freely confirming to a United Press wire reporter that the naked tootsie roll stretched out on red velvet for a trucker calendar was her.

  This was big. Shocking. Revolutionary.

  It was no wonder the press had besieged her.

  Gwendolyn heard four knocks, a pause, then two more. She raced to her back door and yanked it open.

  Marilyn flew inside, pulling a black silk scarf off her head and huge sunglasses from her face.

  With her bright blue eyes and skin that glowed from within, the girl was angelic. Her hair was quite short now, and not nearly so bleached. Marilyn ran her nails through it. “I must look a fright!”

  “Let’s take a deep breath and let it out slowly.” Marilyn mimicked how Gwendolyn filled her lungs, held in the breath, and gradually released it through O-shaped lips. The Citizen-News was still open to the article. Gwendolyn lifted it up. “I have to ask: What were you thinking?!”

  Marilyn shrugged. “Girls do it all the time. Everybody knows that.”

  “But you’re about to film your first starring role, and your Life magazine cover will be coming out soon. Not to mention your date last week with Joe DiMaggio.”

/>   “Those bozos at Fox wanted to issue a denial, but I told them they were nuts.”

  “Gutsy move.”

  “It’s obviously me; to deny it would make us all look like fools. I took those pictures four years ago when I was broke and did what I had to do. And anyway,” she pulled at her bulky black sweater, “under our clothes, we’re all naked, so what’s the big deal?”

  “I bet Zanuck thinks it’s a big deal.”

  The first glimmer of a smile emerged on Marilyn’s face. “You got any coffee going? I haven’t had a thing since yesterday.”

  As Gwendolyn fussed with the percolator, Marilyn filled her in.

  The producers of her next movie, Clash by Night, had learned about the calendar and leaked it to Aline Mosby from United Press International, who called Fox’s PR people for confirmation, who in turn panicked. When Marilyn refused to play the “It Ain’t Me” game, Zanuck set up an exclusive interview.

  “But surely none of you thought that would be the end of it,” Gwendolyn said, setting out the coffee cups.

  “If there was a discussion about what to do once the article came out, nobody thought to include me.”

  “So they just left you to cope with the repercussions on your own? Sounds typical, but this is hardly likely to cool down any time soon.”

  Marilyn wandered over to Gwendolyn’s worktable. She picked up a length of baby pink ribbon left over from one of Ella Fitzgerald’s stage costumes and threaded it through her fingers. “I can’t imagine it will.”

  “So you take control of it.”

  Marilyn narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  “I’d call Kathryn Massey.”

  “From the Hollywood Reporter? You two are friends, right?”

  “If you’re in a jam, you want her in your corner. She could probably whip up some sort of rebuttal.”

  Gwendolyn eyed the pink ribbon. Ella said she’d be in for a fitting “real soon,” but was vague on specifics. Most clients squeezed in dress fittings between luncheons and bridge parties. With all this commotion, any day but today would be good for a drop-in. She wondered if she could get hold of Ella, but tracking down a performer on tour would take Sherlock Holmes and a bloodhound.