Tinseltown Confidential

by Martin Turnbull

  “Honey?” Marilyn’s voice brought Gwendolyn’s attention back into the room. “Your coffee pot?”

  Gwendolyn rescued it from boiling over and set it on the sink. “So shall I call Kathryn?”

  “I already said yes.”

  * * *

  Kathryn arrived less than fifteen minutes later and greeted Marilyn with a winded “OH, YOU POOR THING!” as though she’d run all the way from the Reporter’s offices. “Here’s the line we should take. You were broke, the rent was due, and you did what you had to. Everybody can relate to that. No humiliation. No excuses. No embarrassment.”

  Marilyn let out a whimper of joy and hugged Kathryn. “Thank you! There’s no shame in being nude. We’re all naked at least once or twice a day.”

  The two women settled on the threadbare sofa, so Gwendolyn withdrew into her salon to prepare for the day.

  When Marilyn wandered into the store a few years ago, she was unaffected by the buffeting that inevitably warps a pretty girl scaling the Hollywood ladder. Each time their paths crossed, Gwendolyn could see evidence of a slow transformation.

  Marilyn’s voice was lower now, and breathier, and she’d developed a habit of pulling her top lip over her teeth when she spoke. There was a new baby-doll quality to it, too. And the dreamy innocence that filled her eyes, like she was only half-listening and was happy to go along with whatever you were saying—that was new, too.

  What struck Gwendolyn now was how all that had fallen away when Marilyn rushed into the back room this morning. That panting, little-girl voice and the doe-eyed gaze had disappeared. But just now, when Kathryn arrived, they were back.

  The realization left Gwendolyn to ponder what it took for a woman to succeed in Hollywood. Did they have to invent a character to give audiences what they wanted, what the bigwigs expected? Were they supposed to switch it on in public and off when nobody was around? What if you forget how to turn it off?

  Gwendolyn couldn’t decide if Marilyn Monroe was the cleverest girl she’d ever met, or an emotional breakdown waiting to happen.

  Kathryn and Marilyn burst out into a fit of giggles. “Oh, that’s perfect!” Marilyn exclaimed. “Maybe this isn’t the iceberg that sinks my career, after all.”

  In a heady rush, Gwendolyn realized that girl in her back room whose naked body everyone was scrambling to ogle was having the career that Gwendolyn came to Hollywood for. Twenty years ago, she was the doe-eyed ingénue, desperate to be discovered. She was the one brimming with enough gumption to dance on a human billboard and present herself to David Selznick in hoops and crinolines. But if this was the price of stardom, Gwendolyn was glad she’d never had to pay up.

  Kathryn and Marilyn had been in the back room nearly half an hour when Chez Gwendolyn’s front door whooshed open. “Where the fuck is she?”

  Darryl Zanuck stood in the doorway, all five foot six of him, a snarl etched into his face.

  Gwendolyn walked around the counter and gave him a moment to recognize her. “It’s nice to see you again, too, Mr. Zanuck.”

  “Oh, it’s you.” His fists slid from his hips. “I didn’t realize—hello. Nice to see you.” He took a breath to calm himself. “As you can imagine, I’ve had a shit of a morning.”

  Gwendolyn had dealt with this pint-sized power player enough not to be intimidated. It wasn’t often that someone like her held the cards, and frankly, it was fun. “You think Marilyn is here?”

  “You think there’s anything I don’t know about that girl?”

  Kathryn slipped in front of the black velvet curtain that shielded the messy back room—and Marilyn—from sight. “You didn’t know about the calendar.”

  Zanuck shook his head at Kathryn, almost smiling. “I swear to God. The way you people can sniff out a story makes a guy wonder if you’ve got ESP.”

  Kathryn crossed her arms. “I would’ve thought that you and those jumpy gazelles in publicity had more sense than to let Aline Mosby’s story go out over the wires without a follow-up plan.”

  “Is she back there?” Zanuck pointed to the curtain. “She okay?”

  “No thanks to you.”

  Zanuck closed his eyes as he nodded slowly. When he opened them again, he asked, “May I see her?”

  Kathryn shot Gwendolyn a look. If he’s asking permission, it means he’s screwed up and he knows it.

  Kathryn pulled open the curtain.

  As Zanuck marched toward it, Gwendolyn told him, “Be kind.”

  Kathryn and Mr. Twentieth Century-Fox disappeared behind the black velvet as Gwendolyn went to close the front door, but she hadn’t reached it when Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne appeared.

  Gwendolyn used to see Lena at the Hollywood Canteen during the war. Bette Davis had been especially keen to recruit her to dance with the colored servicemen. Under Bette’s orders, the Canteen had been desegregated, but allowing colored men to dance with white girls was too progressive—even for Bette.

  Ella said, “Lena’s got a gig in Chicago and needs a new outfit, so she tagged along.”

  Ella’s dress was hanging on a rack in the workroom and Gwendolyn wasn’t sure what damage she might wreak if she interrupted the drama playing out back there.

  Ella laid a light hand on Gwendolyn’s arm. “Miss Lena always knows what she wants.”

  Gwendolyn had only seen Lena in low lighting at the Canteen. She possessed the same glow as Marilyn did, as though lit from inside by a torch.

  “I need something full length,” Lena said. “Mermaid silhouette, sweetheart neckline, preferably strapless. Tight around the bust and hips. I want it in periwinkle. Iris in a pinch, but don’t even think of showing me anything mauve.”

  Clients like these were a blessing and a curse. Women with specific tastes saved Gwendolyn hours of time wasted on screwy ideas that wouldn’t suit. On the other hand, they would rarely compromise—even when their concept was impossible or unflattering.

  Gwendolyn was about to tell Lena she had nothing like that in the store when the metal hoops of her velvet curtain slid across the rod. Darryl Zanuck stiffened when he spotted Ella and Lena in his path. He stared at them, stunned, as they stared back at him. He nodded briskly and stomped toward the sidewalk.

  “A word, please,” he told Gwendolyn. “Outside. Now.”

  Gone was the supplicating executive; the commander-in-chief was back. Gwendolyn followed Zanuck out onto Sunset.

  “Kathryn’s guaranteed me two thousand words by four o’clock,” he said.

  “So everything’s okay?”

  Zanuck jacked a thumb at the women inside the store. “What the hell are they doing here?”

  “Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne are customers.”

  Though short in stature, Darryl Zanuck always managed to seem like he was looking down at someone, even if that someone towered over him by at least three inches. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I—”

  “You can’t have people like that in your store.”

  Gwendolyn half-expected this sort of blinkered attitude from the Tinseltown Triplets, but not from someone as sophisticated as this egotistical pipsqueak. “I can’t?”

  “One dumb bitch per day is my limit, so for chrissakes spare me that W-w-w-what? face. I’m grateful that you gave Marilyn a safe haven until we got this mess sorted out, so I’m doing you a favor.” He tapped the window with a knuckle. “You cannot be catering to that clientele. Who they are is beside the point. As it happens, I admire those women, and have nothing against them personally.”

  A dark burgundy limousine pulled up at the curb beside them. Zanuck’s uniformed chauffeur jumped out and opened the passenger door. “But you’re downright stupid if you believe you can sell to them and think there won’t be backlash.”

  Gwendolyn watched, speechless, as he climbed into the car and sped west, then she turned to observe Ella and Lena chatting with Kathryn and Marilyn. Feeling Gwendolyn’s eyes on her, Ella turned to look at Gwendolyn and very slowly shook her head.r />
  CHAPTER 23

  Lucille grimaced. “You don’t even know what crow’s feet are.”

  “Sure I do,” Desi replied. “They’re just like pigeon toes.”

  The director held up his hand. “Technically, that’s not the line.”

  Desi examined his script and read out loud, “Yes I do, they’re like pigeon toes.”

  There were two sure things on the I Love Lucy set: Only Lucy could make fun of Ricky’s Cuban accent, and Desi needed to read his script once to memorize his lines, and twice to memorize everybody else’s.

  Desi forgetting a line was a first, and Marcus wanted to capture the moment. He raised his camera and zoomed in on the guy’s face. He half-pressed the shutter just as his stomach growled. A roiling gurgle followed.

  He ignored it and captured a touching tableau of Desi marking up his script as Lucille watched her husband with unguarded tenderness. After filming thirty-three episodes, they only had two to go and the first season would be over. Marcus was sure Lucy would want that photo included in the official end-of-season album she had planned.

  Marcus admired how well Lucille and Desi had coped with the enormity of their popularity. According to CBS, I Love Lucy was on track to become the first television show to reach ten million households. Thirty million viewers was staggering, but the most famous married couple in America simply came to work with a job to do, a script to finish, costumes to choose, and pratfalls to choreograph.

  Marcus was deeply grateful that he’d managed to land in the eye of Hurricane Lucy, even though he was only scraping by financially. But he’d lived on very little before, and he could do it again.

  Other blacklisted writers were doing the best they could. One he knew was a bartender at the Frolic Room on Hollywood Boulevard, another was editing the Diners Club magazine, and someone else drove a garbage truck. Meanwhile, Marcus was being paid to document a phenomenon that bloomed larger and brighter every week. Okay, so he wasn’t being paid enough to live on, but he figured he was still in the game, if only on its periphery.

  Back in February, the girls pooled their money and bought him a super-whiz-bang camera with an improved zoom lens and flashbulb. Lucille had been so thrilled with the results that she hinted at an end-of-season bonus. That was only two weeks away, after which there’d be nothing for a month.

  The movie extra work that had been so easy to land a year ago had dried up just as he started thinking of it as a regular job. He understood now that it was just a lucky streak; suddenly he was “too old” or “too young” or “too honest” or “too hayseed.” If it wasn’t for I Love Lucy, he’d have moved out of the Garden by now and into some dingy boardinghouse.

  His stomach rippled under his hand, sounding like a clogged drain opening up.

  The director, Marc Daniels, stared at Marcus, then at the clock on the wall. “It’s close enough to lunchtime, so let’s break. See you all back in an hour.”

  Going without lunch the three days a week he was at the studio saved him nearly five bucks. Marcus lingered as the cast and crew wandered away, thinking he’d get some shots of the deserted set. He was loading a fresh roll of film when a voice from his past said,

  “So the rumors are true.”

  Anson Purvis first came into Marcus’ life not long after the war, back when Marcus ran MGM’s writers’ department. Later, it was Purvis who offered Marcus work on The Lone Ranger, which filmed at the same studios.

  Purvis was conspicuously thinner and paler, and walking with a cane, which only served to highlight the contrast between the virile individual Marcus knew at MGM and the emaciated figure that faced him now.

  Marcus shook Purvis’ hand. “The last time I saw you, they were carting you away in a diabetic coma.”

  Purvis leaned against the Ricardos’ kitchen counter. “And I woke up five days later.”

  “If I’d know you were back running The Lone Ranger, I’d have swung by to say hello.”

  It was a bromide, but Purvis acknowledged it with a nod. “I’m just a staff writer now.”

  “You should be writing for the movies,” Marcus said, “not that cowboys-and-Indians tripe—no offense.”

  “You should be, too.”

  “Yeah, well, Red Channels had other plans. So, how are things with the Masked Man?”

  “Fact is, I‘m so bored that I want to stab myself in the eye with a hypodermic.” Purvis scratched his scalp. “I miss the big ideas and big themes; lavish sets and casts of hundreds. And real stars with real star power. Come on, you must miss it, too.”

  Marcus hadn’t permitted himself the indulgence of missing a job he might not ever be allowed to do again. Escaping the blacklist put him ahead of most of his exiled colleagues, but getting off the graylist was proving to be problematic. However, wallowing in a pit of yesterdays felt like a luxury he couldn’t afford.

  “I wish I could help,” he said.

  “Maybe you can. I was in the parking lot yesterday when I heard the writers from the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. They were talking about Quentin Luckett over at Paramount. You’re friends with him, right?”

  “I am, yes.”

  “So I was thinking maybe you could . . .”

  “Put in a good word?”

  “I can try,” he told Anson.

  “I don’t want to put you in an awkward position or anything.”

  “You once did me a favor when I needed it the most. The least I can do is make a phone call.”

  * * *

  When Marcus called the next day, Quentin invited him onto the Paramount lot for “lunch or something.” From what Marcus could gather, only people above a certain pay grade knew of the graylist. As head of writing at Paramount, did that include Quentin? Was the “or something” an escape clause?

  Quentin stood in the doorway of his office, his arms outstretched and a genuinely warm smile on his face. “Such a sight for sore eyes! I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear from you!”

  Even in his forties, the guy had managed to retain his baby face, albeit slightly wrinkled around the edges, and his reddish-blond hair was now a whitish-gray. He pointed to the camera in Marcus’ hands. “Is that the new model?”

  Knowing that Quentin was a photography buff, Marcus had used his new camera as bait when he called. But now he almost felt guilty about employing such a ruse.

  With enough room for a large table, Quentin’s corner office was twice the size of Marcus’ at MGM. Bright sunlight streamed in from two sides as the jaunty notes of a rehearsal pianist floated in through the open windows.

  Marcus held up the camera for Quentin to see.

  “I bet it zooms like a prince.”

  “More like a queen,” Marcus replied, smirking.

  His joke didn’t quite land. Quentin’s smile fell away. “Listen, I need to go over and crack some skulls on the Road to Bali set. You can loaf around here or meet me at the commissary.”

  “Or tag along maybe?”

  After months at a second-string outfit like General Services Studios, Marcus longed to be on a “real” back lot, just like Anson Purvis did. He hated to admit it, but he envied the way Quentin marched past the soundstages and workshops, nodding at workers like the big man on campus.

  “Do you ever hear from Trevor?” Quentin asked.

  “Not since I left Italy. He was about to start filming a movie with Gina Lollobrigida.”

  “The one about the guillotine?”

  “Trevor’s playing Joseph Guillotin and she plays his wife.”

  “Ah, yes, The Lady and Her Blade. Horrible title.”

  Marcus could tell that he knew exactly what his ex was doing and where he was doing it. Trevor had been gone from LA more than two years; Marcus found comfort that he wasn’t alone in finding it hard to let go of former boyfriends.

  They entered a soundstage filled with formal gardens of what passed in Hollywood for a Balinese palace, with a painted dusk backdrop behind a forest of palm trees. In the center Bing Crosb
y and Bob Hope were incongruously dressed in matching gray-and-purple kilts. On a Road To picture, screen logic trumped real-life sense every time.

  “Hopefully this won’t take too long,” Quentin said. “Just hang around here and I’ll take you to the executive dining room later. My treat.”

  Marcus ran his hand along one of the palm trees. They were made of balsa wood and swayed at the slightest touch, but they were painted realistically. There must have been fifty of them planted carefully across the rear.

  It reminded him of the day he wandered onto the set of Honolulu, an Eleanor Powell movie, and stumbled over a cable into a balsa palm tree, almost setting off a domino effect that would have toppled twenty trees if not for the producer’s quick reflexes. Jack Cummings was Mayer’s nephew and could have reported the incident to Uncle Louis, but he didn’t. They got a boy-that-was-a-close-one laugh out of it and never mentioned it again.

  Mayer often entered Marcus’ thoughts these days. Lifting him off the blacklist was generous, especially as he hadn’t asked for a favor in return.

  “Excuse me.” A young guy with a wispy moustache pointed to the camera in Marcus’ hands. “Is that the new Leica?”

  “It is. You want to take a look?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was hoping I could borrow it.” The guy grimaced like he’d just stepped on a nail. “I’m the production photographer and I just dropped my camera. This concrete floor busted it all apart and Mr. Hope’s going to blow a gasket if I have to tell him.”

  “You don’t have a backup?”

  “Normally, yes, but it froze on me yesterday.”

  “You’re not having a good week.”

  “No, sir, I am not. I was wondering if perhaps I could rent yours.”

  Marcus didn’t really want to part with his precious baby, but his ears pricked up. “For how long?” He really meant, For how much?

  “Today and tomorrow. How’s about five bucks per day?”

  Ten bucks bought Marcus a month of beans and rice. “Sounds good.”

  “Man, oh man, have you ever saved my bacon!”