Rita Will

by Rita Mae Brown

  Now you might wonder what my neighbors were doing when the van pulled up. This is Los Angeles. People move in and move out almost hourly. It didn’t seem strange.

  Since whoever robbed me knew my routine, I was pretty sure one of the men who built cabinets in the house must have been in on it. If not him, someone like him. They knew precisely when I would leave and precisely when I would return. And may they experience as much pain as they inflict. That’s my wish for anyone like that.

  Fannie refused to come to the house. She was sure they’d return to kill me. Since they had everything, I couldn’t see why they’d bother to come back.

  She shopped with me to buy clothing, a task I hate and she loves. I don’t think I’ve ever looked as good as I did when I was with Fannie. She has a great eye for how something on the rack will look on you. I know how I’ll look in Levi’s and a white T-shirt and cowboy boots. That’s it.

  Kate helped out, too. She gave me some sweaters and odds and ends.

  Fannie missed Montecito, so we rented a tiny bungalow not far from the ocean. She spent time in Los Angeles with Kate and time back in Montecito with me. I loved the place. It was quiet and I could write. Even better, we had rented it from Virginia Cherrill, who’d played the blind girl in Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights and had been Cary Grant’s first wife. She was Virginia Martini now, having married a World War II ace flying for the Free Polish. That was after she ditched the Earl of Jersey, her second husband. Mrs. Martini must have been in her seventies, but retained her beauty. She wasn’t one to yak about her past life, as are so many old people. But if you asked, she would answer.

  Since the silents are my favorite period of film history, I bristled with questions. She liked Chaplin but felt he had taken too much on himself. Making films became more of a burden than a joy for him. As for Cary Grant, of him she would say only, “He has the first dollar he ever made.” Her stories of England during World War II were poignant and fascinating. She told me many times, “You don’t know how lucky you are to be an American.” I believed her.

  I flourished with the solitude and my occasional chats with Mrs. Martini. Fannie would arrive for weekends and it would become a three-ring circus. Fannie tends to fill up a room.

  Then there were her experiments. One time she decided she was spending too much money at the beauty parlor. She’d wax herself. Well, that was tedious and boring, so she thought she’d singe the hair off her legs. However, she dropped the match and I was treated to the spectacle of Fannie, her crotch in flames.

  Another time she decided she had to have a Nash Rambler. None could be found. She bought a Pacer, another American Motors vehicle, without a doubt one of the ugliest cars ever built. She loved it. Out went the black-on-black 450 SL.

  By now I’d sold the Rolls. I have a knack for knowing what cars and property will appreciate. I figured that a life in the arts is dangerous enough as it is, and I’d better learn how to make money in other places. I leased a car since I didn’t want to tie up money right then.

  I wanted to rent a Porsche. I love Porsches and think today’s 911 Turbo widebody one of the greatest road cars ever manufactured. But Fannie hated the stick shift. I rented a 450 SL, a very good car indeed, and we knew she could drive it.

  Kate would visit the Montecito house and roar with laughter. She didn’t know how we could stand such a teeny place. My workroom was at one end of the house and Fannie’s bedroom/workroom at the other. The cats dashed up and down the hallway between us, sometimes running out to the lemon grove next door.

  Paintings by Oliver Messel—he was the famous art designer from the 1930s—hung in the living room. He’d given them to Mrs. Martini. I brought nothing personal to the place, nor had Fannie. Her stuff was in the Los Angeles house.

  It was odd, living in a place that held nothing of your own, but I learned that wherever my books and cats are, that’s home.

  The Dalmatians stayed with Kate, a good thing, since the girls had never bothered to train them. I was up to the task but I hadn’t the time because I was working steadily, thank God.

  A large Saddlebred stable run by Cynthia Wood and her mother was on Ridge Road not two miles away. I enjoyed watching the horses get worked and I especially loved going over to the polo matches. I considered picking up my old line of work, hot-walking horses, but Fannie thought I was beyond that.

  I met Margaret Mallory of Mallory Steamship Lines. Old by then, smart as a whip, she taught me a great deal about art. Her house on Ridge Road had more incredible paintings in it than many museums. She had a John Singer Sargent that almost made me cry when I studied it. He has been underrated until recently, and part of that is because of how he blends beauty with suppressed emotion. That’s been out of fashion. People are painting the insides of dead sheep.

  What I learned from Margaret was that my favorite area would be sporting art. Figures.

  Margaret would give teas on her patio. We’d listen to the ships out in the Pacific and watch the lights on the oil rigs come on as the sun set. She was companionable, lonely and a sparkling conversationalist.

  She used to say, “Well, no matter what, I haven’t turned into Doris Duke!” Then we’d goad her into telling Doris Duke stories or Betty Hutton stories or Mable Dodge Luhan stories. She knew everybody.

  Kate began dating. She was pulling out of her decline and started making plans again. She bought a lovely small house of her own.

  The big house had sold at a big profit. I told Fannie if she blew that money I’d strangle her. She put it in a savings account. Fannie is terrible about money; it burns a hole in her pocket.

  During this period, Fannie and I were never seen together publicly. She had a holy horror of anyone thinking she was a lesbian. Why in God’s name did she fall in love with me?

  The only time we were seen together was with Kate or with a few old friends in Montecito and Santa Barbara. The gay ones were lovely but everyone was in the closet. Deep in the closet. I considered buying them oxygen masks.

  Since no lesbian in Hollywood would speak to me, Montecito didn’t feel any different. No one wanted to be seen with me, except one gay man, Brad, a realtor. He was a joy.

  My friends were straight. Which matters little because I don’t pick my friends based on race, class, gender or gender preference. If I like you, I like you, and if I don’t, I don’t. I don’t give a fig about your bank account either.

  But my persona mattered to everyone else who was gay.

  That Fannie felt that way, too, hurt. I said nothing. I’d heard her arguments about how she’d be ruined in Hollywood, and watching Kate get stabbed in the back made the point.

  After a while, though, I wondered what I was doing in a business where people jumped at their own shadow. I think of life as a foxhunt. If there’s a fence in front of you, go over it. Who cares how you look doing it? If there’s snow, go through it. If there’s a ravine, lean back and move along. Go.

  One bright morning I drove my rented 450 SL, painted metallic bronze with cream pinstripes, to the travel agent. I pulled in next to an XKE in good condition.

  A tall, pretty woman came out to the car as I closed the door to mine.

  “Nice car, Rita Mae.” She recognized me and held out her hand. “Muffin Spencer-Devlin.”

  We became friends for life. Muffin, a golf pro, was on the road a lot. Fannie worried about her. Might she be too gay? Aren’t all female athletes gay? Etc. Mostly I lunched with Muffin alone when Fannie was in the city during the week. I learned a lot about golf, although I didn’t try to play, and I learned a lot about Muffin, who suffers from manic-depression. She battles her illness with a distinct lack of self-pity.

  Montecito was jammed with interesting people. I met Robert Mitchum once at a cocktail party and Jane Russell, knitting, happened to sit next to me at a literary gathering in town. Jane Russell has the most extraordinary face. It’s more than beautiful: it’s lived-in and real. Not that the stars would remember me, but what I remember about them
was what quiet people they were. If fame had ever turned their heads, they had gotten over it.

  Dame Judith Evans lived up the road but I never met her. As she was one of the greatest actresses of her generation, I wished I had.

  Fannie still lives in Montecito. She bought the bungalow a few years later.

  Much as I loved Montecito, I felt the colors slowly draining from my skin. If I was going to be the lesbian bogeyman, then I might as well be that bogeyman at home, where real stories were, where people talked about something other than “the deal,” and where I could hear English, lyrical, majestic, quirky English. I felt as though everyone in southern California talked mush. Not that they weren’t smart, far from it, but too few of them had a love of the language.

  In Dixie we love the sweep of the sound as well as what we’re saying. Of course, many’s the time we aren’t saying anything, but who cares?

  60

  The Booby Prize

  One afternoon after an entire day of taping Hollywood Squares, Fannie hopped into her slugmobile. I’d been shopping at the farmers’ market and met her in CBS’s parking lot.

  “I’ll bet you five hundred dollars you won’t drive from CBS to the Beverly Wilshire with your shirt and bra off.”

  “Deal.” She shook my hand.

  “I’ll follow you to make sure you don’t cheat.”

  “This will be the easiest five hundred dollars I’ve ever made.” She beamed as she peeled off her shirt.

  She waited until she had passed the guard house on her way out of the parking lot before unhitching her bra. Exposing her full glories to natural light, she drove to Wilshire, turned west and merrily rolled along.

  How I stayed on the road I don’t know, because I laughed until the tears rolled down my cheeks. What was even funnier was the fact that no one noticed. Every person in the opposing lanes was so intent on reaching their destination that they peered ahead—pure tunnel vision. She reached the venerable hotel and turned left, pulling over to the curb across from the cafe in the hotel. She hastily threw on her shirt.

  “I want my money now.” She rolled down her window.

  “Go to the Saks parking lot and I’ll write you a check.”

  We rendezvoused at Saks. I wrote her a check. She promptly spent it.

  Saks Fifth Avenue had been the scene of a unique escapade for Baby Jesus. A year and a half before Fannie’s excellent adventure, I was staying in a small apartment behind Saks. One warm afternoon I opened the door and Baby Jesus scooted out, a-hellin’ toward the store. Flying across the parking lot, she aimed her gray self at the back door, which, being continually opened and closed, was child’s play for Miss Jesus. She zipped in like a hardened shopper.

  The cosmetics counters at that time faced the back door, as that was the door most in use. The cat considered the merits of perfumes, listened to a few remarks from the exquisitely made-up ladies behind the various counters, then continued on her way.

  Men’s clothing held little appeal for her. She found the back stairway and marched right up. She settled herself in the leather handbags and small luggage, which then was at the top of the stairs.

  By the time I reached Baby, a crowd of shoppers and salespeople had gathered around to admire or admonish her. When she saw me she gave out that wondrous cackle that cats give when prey is in sight. She considered this audience her due.

  The best part was that the manager had a sense of humor and issued a Saks card to B. J. Brown. It couldn’t really be used but it was fun nonetheless, and Baby Jesus always traveled with her Saks Fifth Avenue credit card, which was a tasteful dark chocolate with white lettering.

  Unpredictable, game and ever ready to pop the balloon of a windbag egotist, Fannie reminded me of Mom. Like Mom, she had to be the center of attention, and like Mom, she kept you laughing. Mother wasn’t good about money but Fannie was even worse. If I didn’t grab her paycheck, she’d spend it before paying the rent, the utilities and the grocery bill that month. But she handed over the money cheerfully. I’d subtract the required amounts and she’d joyously squander the rest. Or maybe she didn’t squander it. How can you put a price on fun? She extracted the maximum of pleasure from every penny. Nor was she unwilling to invest, but she needed to see the investment. Stocks and bonds held little allure for her. She was bold enough to buy that house in Montecito with Kate. She wasn’t a coward on any level except her own homosexuality and she had plenty of people joining her on that one.

  Fannie surprised me by being a good athlete. She doesn’t much like sports but she’s well coordinated and can learn to do anything. We joined no clubs together. She wanted to keep her public distance. Once Kate took us to her country club at an off time. Country club dues shoot through the roof in California. I don’t know how anyone can afford to belong to anything.

  Once we played tennis on the Spanish-style grade school’s old courts. The late afternoon shadows bisected the worn surface. Fannie ran, giggled and whacked the ball back over the net. When we finished she jumped the net even though I’d won. That’s one of my fondest memories of her, the silly, spontaneous line of chatter and her willingness to do something important to me.

  When she was at the bungalow we’d walk at sundown. About a half mile down the road, heading toward Carpentaria, sat thirty unspoiled acres filled with golden poppies, the remains of an old played-out grove, and a few eucalyptus trees whose scent floated over the meadows. I’d tell Fannie where the stable should be built, the house sited. What a beautiful piece of land it was. Of course, it’s developed now, filled with tastefully expensive houses owned by people who think they’re in the country because they own two acres.

  California and Florida make an excellent case for environmental control and curbs on development. If I witnessed the destruction of California farmland from the early seventies to today, imagine the sorrow of someone much older who knew paradise, now lost.

  Once good soil is built over, it stays built over. The land is lost forever.

  Hollywood attracts talent, then destroys it. The endless cycle of actors, writers and directors chewed up and spit out by the system wasn’t going to stop with me. Whether it was D. W. Griffith, Orson Welles, Mabel Normand or Rita Hayworth, precious few escape unscathed. Even the ebullient Douglas Fairbanks Sr. sickened of it, walking away toward the end of his life.

  Fannie managed to keep her creativity intact by living on the fringes of the system. Hollywood Squares, a game show, utilized the tiniest part of her resources, but it paid the bills, leaving her free for other pursuits. Trained as an actor, she believed that was where she’d make her contribution. But Hollywood has trouble with beautiful, comedic women even though film and TV seem to be a women’s medium—it’s so easy to reproduce “reality” in them. Women fare much better, artistically, in reality than they do in fantasy or thrillers. This is just a hunch, not a real theory. Once comedic actresses dominated film. Then came television in the fifties. Not that television was easy, but the demand for product opened the net wide enough for more women to create more characters. Also, in the beginnings of any industry, it’s freer—women had a chance.

  Starting with Marie Dressier, a gargantuan talent in figure and expression, the rule has been that a funny woman must be an unattractive woman. Marie started in silents and made the transition to sound, a rara avis! Mabel Normand and Mary Pickford were beautiful but they were silent stars. Once talkies arrived, a different type moved forward. Jean Harlow could be funny but she played the dumb blonde; she wasn’t intelligently funny. Jean Arthur was. Myrna Loy was in The Thin Man. Carole Lombard was close to divine. If you think about it, you can count the witty, beautiful ones on your fingers.

  Fanny could have been one of the witty, intelligent ones, but she came of age when the prevailing film fashion was gruesomely humorless except for television. She was just perfect for a sitcom, but a perfect sitcom never found her.

  Like Bea Lillie, she was so original that no one, at that time, was original enough to make
something for her.

  Heartbreak goes with the territory. Fannie, shrewd and tough, never gave her heart to the business. I learned from her to do likewise. You can hire my brain, my experience, my calm demeanor, and I’ll write you a very good piece. If the gods smile on me, I’ll write a great piece. But no one in Hollywood will ever buy my heart. If I hadn’t learned it from Fannie, and by example from Kate, I would have eventually absorbed the lesson from film history.

  I’m starting to believe there’s a direct ratio between contempt and talent. The more talent you have, the greater the contempt you are held in. Even the stars big enough to find their own vehicles and get them financed are despised secretly.

  In the earliest days of film, the producers at Biograph refused to list the names of the players, fearing that if the public knew them, they’d be forced to pay them bigger salaries. As it was, they paid them little enough. When Mary Pickford and the Gish sisters broke that mold, the business changed forever, but the administration’s hatred of the stars hasn’t changed. Producers’ initial fear of salary demands was prophetic.

  The whole point is to get you cheap, use you up and throw you out, then go find another cheap one since there’s a steady supply of talent. This applies to any above-the-line talent, which means writers, directors, actors. The writer, always short-sheeted in the money process, is now beginning to have her/his day.

  The underlying assumption of this crass misuse of people is that talent is interchangeable. It is not. Sure, there are eleven thousand writers in the Writers Guild of America, but Writer A excels on different territory than Writer B.

  Same for actresses. D. W. Griffith found this out when, hoping to put Mary Pickford in her place, he tried to invent a new star, Mae Marsh. He was lucky. Mae made good pictures and the public liked her, but not in the way they worshipped Mary. Woke up Griffith, though.