Delayed Rays of a Star

by Amanda Lee Koe

  * * *

  —

  ANATAHAN WAS SCREENING in the afternoon, so I thought it was on Jo’s schedule, but when the hour neared he suggested we go to the Piazza San Marco.

  I don’t want to see it, he said, and I don’t want you to see it.

  If you didn’t want to see it, I remember asking, why are you here?

  He turned to me with a rueful smile and shrugged.

  At the Piazza San Marco, Jo bought me a green cashmere scarf. I still have it; I wear it in the winter. Then we ate the most delicious gnocchi I ever had in my life, served with a butter sage sauce in a tiny trattoria. We got lost in the alleys and ended up by the canal. One of the touristy gondolas with their gondoliers in striped shirts passed by, and I remarked that I’d never been on one. Leni Riefenstahl, Jo said, you won the Golden Lion in Venice, but you’ve never been on a gondola? He flagged it down. Jo steadied me, making sure I got in safe before he hopped on with the help of his cane. Immediately our gondolier assumed we were a retired German couple on holiday, and asked us in a mix of German and Italian how many years we had been married.

  So, Jo said as he took my hand, it’s coming to thirty years now.

  And children?

  None, Jo said.

  I remember what the gondolier said: None? Then you must have big love, or big career.

  Both, Jo said.

  Both! The gondolier said.

  I grinned at Jo as we glided through the backwaters of Venice.

  * * *

  —

  IN THE EVENING there was a screening of Olympia.

  We parted early as I wanted to take a shower, put on my makeup, and change into the dress I’d bought for the screening. It had some beadwork at the shoulders, and a matching shawl.

  I was a little embarrassed to want to attend my own screening, since Jo had not gone to his. I told him he didn’t have to come with me, but he insisted he would like to. We agreed to meet at the hotel lobby. When I went downstairs, I saw Jo waiting for me in a tuxedo, with his thin white hair neatly slicked back. As I got closer, I noticed one of the programmers from the festival. She looked very apologetic as she told me that in order to assuage protestors, they’d had to cancel my prescreening introduction, and my postscreening Q&A. At least we didn’t have to ax the entire thing, she said. I tried to hide my disappointment, especially in front of Jo. She said I could skip the screening if I felt more comfortable with that, but the truth was that I had been waiting to see Olympia on the big screen. Who knew when I’d get the chance again?

  Jo saw my face and said to the programmer: We’ll enter from the side, and sit in the back. The programmer said that would be okay, and she apologized again. There was a festival car waiting up front, she said, but it might be too conspicuous if we arrived in that vehicle—

  Jo offered me his elbow.

  It’s a short stroll away, he remarked, who needs a car?

  * * *

  —

  THE CINEMA WAS small, but even so, it was more than half empty. Though no one knew I was there, I felt quite ashamed. I was used to walking in on a red carpet, being greeted by a full house. Not an empty seat in the theater, cinephiles outside begging to take a ticket off someone’s hands for twice the price. Maybe the protestors had frightened everyone off, or it was the time slot, it must have been programmed against one of the popular hotshots who was screening a new movie at the same time at a bigger venue. Sometimes you can’t compete with all of that. I’ve learned to let go over the years. You have just got to be grateful that someone wants to show your old work on a big screen in its original format, as it should rightfully be seen, in a proper cinema. My epic films are not for small TVs and home stereos. They are meant to be experienced as a world that can envelope your senses fully.

  This is why I love the movies, they sweep you away.

  Olympia was starting.

  Suddenly I was excited again, my palms soft with sweat. Frame by frame, it was just as beautiful as I remembered it to be, and it struck me that the best and most unknowable parts of ourselves are recorded in our work, and why should anything else matter?

  Humans are pack creatures.

  When someone booed for no reason at the mesmerizing pole-vault sequence, a few others echoed back. I became afraid—what if the booing grew louder and did not stop? What if everyone walked out and I was the only one left in here? What if they noticed me, and started throwing things at me, calling me awful names? In the dark Jo took my hand and squeezed it. I was just waiting for the part where Jesse Owens wins the one hundred meters. Anyone with eyes can see that I am not a racist. There I was documenting a black man winning the race for the whole world to see. How magnificently I’ve captured his victory. True enough, someone began to clap as Jesse Owens reached the finish line, and I was glad for that.

  It was over so quickly. I could have stayed in there for hours.

  As the credits rolled and the exit lights came on, there was a brief smattering of applause, and for a moment I wanted to stand up right where I was and say hello, just to wave, you know, and thank them for coming. But the applause was immediately extinguished when a voice shouted: Fanculo al fascismo! Mai perdonare, mai dimenticare!

  Jo threw his jacket over me, and we waited in our seats as people filed out of the cinema.

  I couldn’t see anything through the dark wool, but my sense of sound was heightened. I heard every last footstep as my credits rolled. The film was over, but I wanted to tell them to come back, please come back. How many times will I have to say it? I have never been a Nazi. I was just an artist working in a certain place at a certain time. I am the scapegoat because it is easier to take your rage out on a woman, instead of the system. Why has that long shadow been cast over the rest of my life? Don’t think I haven’t suffered. Every last thing I loved has been taken from me. Do you know I never got to make another movie after Tiefland? I tried so hard, but all my projects after the war were blocked. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much to you, but filmmaking was what I lived for. I would never again call “Action!” and hear the clack of a slate, assistant directors shouting for everyone to clear my shot as they scurried away before the camera rolled. I would never again hear the thunder of applause in a movie palace filled to maximum capacity, and rise to receive it with no weight on my shoulders. On the screen, everything is perfectible and nothing hurts. Life is just the opposite. Pockmarked, full of mistakes. You can’t call for a reshoot to iron out your slipups, or edit them out of the final story. No, you have to live with everything. Can you understand, for a perfectionist, how rotten that is?

  Leni, I heard Jo’s voice.

  Breathing deeply through the lining of his jacket to reduce the drumming in my ears, I recall pretending it was a fresh towel over my face—an old calmative from childhood. On hot summer days, my mother would wet them with thyme water and tie them around my neck to cool me off from an afternoon’s play. That’s enough now, she used to say, you are so active you should have been born a boy. I told her I liked being a girl. Of course you do, she said. I prayed for you to be born a girl, how many times have I told you?

  Countless times she’d told me.

  Did you know my mother had wanted to be an actress?

  But that was as far as she got—she was afraid.

  Does it ever change? What are women afraid of these days?

  Nothing, and everything—

  That they’re too plain, too dumb, too fat, too thin. That it isn’t the right time, the right place, the right thing. That one day they’ll try for something they really want—then hear: No.

  It’ll be different for you, my mother would say to me. You shan’t be just like everyone else. You’ll go far, won’t you, my darling girl?

  Leni, I heard Jo say to me in the theater. There’s no one left, it’s safe. Let’s go.

  I remember forcing back
my tears under his jacket: I was not going to cry. Not when I got everything I wished for.

  Everyone knows my name. My movies, my pictures, they’ve stood the test of time. Even my haters can’t say my work isn’t beautiful. The last thing I am is ordinary. I can’t turn back time, but in the ways I knew how, I must have made someone proud. I must have done some good in this world, too.

  I did not cry then.

  I am not going to cry now.

  Marlon Brando Lays an Egg as News of Pearl Harbor Reaches a Chicken Coop in New York

  十四

  For years Anna May’s line was stone cold. Hon, my job is to be real with you, her agent said. You’re fifty-five, you’re Asian American, you’re a woman. Chin up. Ciao-ciao.

  Her dry spell continued into 1960. Even before the end of the war, Oriental-tinged classics had passed firmly out of style. In the decade and a half since, sci-fi, youth rebellion, and noir thrillers were in demand, though of late the picture houses were emptier than ever. TV sitcoms kept everyone home, glued to the small screen. I Love Lucy was huge. All everyone wanted to talk about was marketing. Even as Anna May slid precariously from B pictures to Poverty Row studios, when approached to front a Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste campaign for a whopping wage, she had turned it down without thinking twice. The proposed TV spot was centered around the absurd visual of Anna May in a cheongsam sporting a Fu Manchu-esque toothpaste moustache, giving a wide grin to the camera as she held up the tube.

  What does Fu Manchu have to do with toothpaste, Anna May had asked the ad man.

  Nothing, the ad man had said.

  Seeing what endorsements did for her B-list peers opened Anna May’s eyes. Betty Furness’s popularity soared for the next ten years, after she became the spokeswoman for Westinghouse appliances. She’d made more money with a string of two-minute refrigerator ads than she had her entire career playing hillbilly supporting parts. They were even terming Betty a “consumer advocate” these days. No one had any idea what that meant.

  * * *

  —

  ANNA MAY’S AGENT still grumbled about her rejecting the toothpaste spot. Would’ve been much easier to sell you for TV work if you’d accepted that ad, her agent would say. We’ve pretty much missed the boat now.

  I’m not some product endorser, she protested, I’m a film actress.

  Principles are lovely, her agent said, but we’ve entered a new age. Why can’t you be both? They’re not mutually exclusive, and I want us to do right by you.

  Privately Anna May had to wonder—did she really have principles, or was it that it was Colgate? If Lanvin had come calling, would she have turned it down just the same? In any case Anna May did not regret passing on the ad, but she would have given anything to get one of those evil Chinese vixen roles in a sumptuous production again. Why is it that the screen Chinese is nearly always the villain? she’d commented to Film Weekly as a young actress. And so crude a villain. Murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass. We are not like that. How should we be, with a civilization that is so many times older than that of the West? Protesting the ills of stereotyping, she had been far too busy ferreting about for good-girl lead roles back then to revel in being the bad girl. She’d never quite seen it this way till just a few years ago, when she bumped into an over-the-hill B-lister at a gas station.

  I’m just going to come right out and say it, the B-lister said. You got the best parts.

  I got the best parts? Anna May almost choked.

  Never rode into the sunset with anyone, the B-lister was saying. Someone pulls a gun on you? You twist a dagger into them. You had the sexiest costumes, the sassiest lines. No kissing anyone up, you kissed them off.

  * * *

  —

  LAST WEEK, A phone call from her agent: Do you know Lana Turner?

  Yes, Anna May said.

  They’re interested in having you play her housemaid.

  The maid’s name was Tawny. Anna May waited for herself to hang up the phone. Instead she heard herself say: When do we start?

  Her agent filled her in on the details, telling her not to worry, he had her long absence from the screen covered. He read her the press statement he’d prepared: Anna May Wong returns to big screen with Lana Turner for Portrait in Black after spiritual hiatus. The veteran performer, best remembered for her roles as Hui Fei in Shanghai Express and Princess Ling Moy in the Daughter of Fu Manchu, has been cultivating bonsai in the Palisades and taking a break from the industry but is now ready to jump back in and make a splash.

  Anna May was cringing on the other end of the line.

  I don’t know, she managed to say. Tawny’s just a maid.

  Hey bean, her agent said. Don’t shortchange yourself now. Look where playing a maid in Gone with the Wind got Hattie McDaniel, eyes on the prize!

  * * *

  —

  EVEN AS HER own career tanked, Anna May followed the movies religiously—1960 had been a fabulous year so far. She’d seen Psycho, Hiroshima Mon Amour, La Dolce Vita, L’Avventura, The 400 Blows, Some Like It Hot, Breathless.

  Things were changing.

  Whole movies could be shot on location with handheld cameras without scripts; there was no need for perfect lines played to cameras on sticks and huge sets in studio lots. In Hollywood, it was no longer illegal for a white character to kiss a brown or black or yellow one—the Motion Picture Production Code had been abolished, as if it should never have been there in the first place. Anna May still had a special place for Chaplin in her heart, but her new favorite performer was Marlon Brando. While everyone else projected their performance toward the camera or an imagined audience on the director’s cue, he simply waited till he felt like doing something: mumble a line, smile, touch his costar.

  If Brando did not feel it, he did nothing, said nothing.

  How Anna May treasured that anecdote told by Brando’s acting teacher, Stella Adler: In her West Village workshop in New York, Miss Adler had told the class that they were all chickens. In their chicken coop was a radio. Over the radio comes news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

  React as chickens.

  Bwak buk buk buk all the other students clucked madly, hopping around the auditorium, knocking into each other as they flapped their wings. One girl, who would later become a successful Broadway star, acted quiet and fearful. Across the room, in a corner, the boy who would be Brando folded up his wings and squatted down.

  He laid an egg.

  * * *

  —

  THE ONLY MOVIE anyone ever remembered Anna May in was Shanghai Express, a fact that would inadvertently be put to her in this manner: What was it like working with Marlene Dietrich?

  In the beginning she worried that no matter her response, it would come off sounding insincere or bitter, even if she meant otherwise. But over the years Anna May saw that everyone carried with them their own fantastical impression of Marlene, skimmed off the cream of her diva public image: studio features, glossy covers, industry scandals, gossip columns. When Marlene played a glamorous singer in Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair in the forties, her costar Jean Arthur made a ruckus accusing the director of playing favorites. The tabloids had published an account of Jean driving to Billy’s house to confront him with: Marlene told you to burn my close-up, didn’t she? Slated to appear in Hitchcock’s Stage Fright in 1950, Marlene was rumored to have issued an ultimatum as regards her participation: No Dior, no Dietrich!

  And so the answer Anna May gave did not matter, not in the least.

  What was it like working with Marlene Dietrich? She’d come to smile sagely on these occasions. Just like everything you’d think it would be.

  Anna May tried to avoid taking the route that would pass the large billboard of Marlene’s face advertising her year-end gig with the Riviera. It had sprung up in the fall of ’60. Vegas was booming if you were the right type of performer
. One-upmanship was the sport of the day as Italian, Russian, and Jewish mobsters building up one casino resort after another tried to outdo one another on the strip: camel murals, wave pools, futuristic dance clubs, Old West steakhouses. By all accounts, they were generous paymasters when filling out their entertainment rosters, connoisseurs with real taste who knew what they were paying for. Nat King Cole, Liberace, and Mae West were earning the fattest paychecks anyone had ever seen. Even Hollywood couldn’t compare. The papers said Marlene commanded at least sixty thousand dollars a week. Her 1960 show with the Riviera was part of a world tour including Germany, Israel, and France. She’d made the news when she became the only performer in Tel Aviv allowed to sing in German since the war. After Marlene’s Vegas opening night was announced, that symmetrical face, which through the years so reminded Anna May of her own failure, began turning up all over town.

  Billboards and newsstands were to be expected, and those she could ride or walk by with averted eyes, but the glossy poster tacked to a supermarket bulletin board in Anna May’s neighborhood in the Palisades took her wholly by surprise. Hugging a bag of produce to her chest, Anna May stared at the tight, sequined dress, the triple-strand pearl choker, and the pout effected to look like the mouth had just blown a kiss. The cheekbones were as high as they’d ever been, the blond hair more platinum than before, across the forehead not a single discernible wrinkle. All in all, the face came across as invulnerable rather than beautiful.