by Jina Bacarr
‘This can’t wait, Juliana. You need to see this.’
I’ve never known Ridge to be so insistent. He’s used to facing a high level of danger and doing stunts in one take without rehearsal. Now he sounds downright panicked.
I let out a cleansing breath and try to remain calm, but inside I’m exploding with a hot fever I haven’t felt since the night Maman passed.
‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
6
Sylvie
Ooh, la la! The girl goes to Paree
Delacroix Studios, Paris
1928
I struggle with the thick rope, sweat streaming down my face from the hot lights, my hands tied to the back of a chair, and kick out my legs. My angel-white hair flies around my face while I fight off the mad doctor.
Why is the damn rope so tight around my wrists? The script doesn’t call for my hands to go numb.
‘You’ll never make me talk.’ I narrow my brows. ‘I’ll never tell you where I hid the orphans. They’re safe from your evil deeds.’ I lift my chin, flutter my long, fake lashes.
‘You’ll talk, Ninette, or I’ll cut your throat,’ sputters the mad doctor in his perfect, deep baritone pitch, hovering over me. Pierre Limone comes from the stage and is a seasoned character actor. He’s a master of makeup and disguises and insists on delivering his lines with fervor. He’s taught me what it means to ‘become’ the character you’re playing on the screen. ‘No one is coming to save you.’
‘Save me? From you, Doctor Heidelberg?’ I throw my head back and laugh. ‘You can’t fool me… Lucifer.’
‘Your angel magic is not powerful enough to escape me. Now you shall die…’
He raises his knife, bringing it down toward my throat, cackling and laughing, his eyes bugging out… oh, God, he’s overacting, milking the part… Why not? I’m still struggling with the damn rope knots. This is the part where I pull myself free and overpower the devil disguised as an evil scientist and save the two orphans.
I can’t budge.
The shooting pain in my arms from the tight ropes around my wrists is making me helpless. I keep struggling and kick out my laced-up boots. I nearly get Pierre in the crotch.
He jumps back.
‘Now you shall die…’ he repeats, coming close to nicking the skin on my bare neck. The insane look in his eyes and that smirk tells me it’s no coincidence I can’t get loose.
He paid off the prop man to make the rope too tight. Giving him more screen time on his big scene. I can’t blame him. His lines were cut so Emil can get the film out in the theaters two weeks earlier than planned while the public is still hot for my films.
Word around Paris is, talkies are in… silent two-reeler serials on their way out. Les Orphelins Perdus (Lost Orphans) is my final Ninette film. A serial about a seamstress, an angel sent to earth to do good deeds while the devil in various disguises tries to undo those deeds and get rid of her. We’ve made ten two-reelers and two features (four reels) in the past two years.
‘I am going to die if someone doesn’t loosen these rope knots, Emil,’ I say, trying to find my director. Pierre is getting too close for comfort. Another minute and my career is over. I have to smile, reflect on this crazy life I’ve chosen while the prop man races to my side and works on loosening the rope knots around my wrists, never looking me in the eye when I offer to pay him twice what Pierre did if he puts ground pepper in my co-star’s phony beard. It’s part of the game in the world of cinema. With Pierre and me, it’s innocent pranks. With others, it’s survival if you want to make that next picture.
Always watch your back because no one else will.
Advice I got from Sister Vincent (she used more pious language) when I sneaked over to the convent when we were shooting on location nearby.
I strain my eyes, but I can’t see through the blaze of lights or the eyelashes. Where is Emil? He’s never far from my side. Not since that day I ran away from the convent.
I had no idea then what I was getting myself into.
Was it two years ago I was that dumb kid who would do anything to be an actress?
I often think about how simple getting into pictures seemed to me then. Go to Paris… do what Emil says… become a movie star.
It didn’t work that way. I had a lot of bumps in the road and my endearing dream of finding a father figure in Emil… well, let’s say it wasn’t what I hoped.
Things moved quickly when we arrived in Paris with Emil getting me a place to live in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, a working-class district in the suburbs of the city. I was in heaven. First floor apartment. Ivy-covered walls. My own bedroom with a sink and tub. Tall, beautifully carved wood garderobe I thought I’d never fill. Soft bed with a daisy quilt. Even an icebox in the tiny kitchen where I found ice slivers for my swollen eye and split lip. He wasn’t pleased when he saw my bruised face, surmising a zealous nun struck me to prevent me from leaving. I didn’t deny it and we never discussed it again. I healed up as good as new in a few days and the incident was forgotten.
Still, I wondered if I’d ever let go of the fear I have of not being loved, of not being good enough for someone to love me. This is why I defy the odds and abandon myself to the heat of the moment because it’s then I do feel loved. I don’t have an answer, but it’s that recklessness that got me here, so I have no complaints. It’s something that comes to the surface at times, though, and I wonder if it will be the end of me. I know Sister Vincent is praying for me and a warm, holy rush of faith fills me. I don’t understand why the Mother Superior harbors such hatred toward me, but I left that life behind. Something Emil makes perfectly clear to me.
For the next two years he rules my life from the minute I wake up till I drop my head on the pillow late at night. Since I’m underage when the studio signs me to a seven-year contract, they insist he procure a ‘guardian’ for me. I should mention Emil also acts as my manager which gives him final say in everything, including hiring Miss Brimwell, an acting and dialogue coach who still looks after me today though I’ve turned eighteen. Emil keeps her on to work with me, telling me it’s important I find the theatrical tone of my voice because he’s working on a ‘big secret’ that will catapult my career into a new realm. He loves to keep things from me, so I have to depend on him. It’s no secret this is the last year of making silent films.
Which brings me back to Miss Brimwell and her voice coaching lessons.
She can, at times, be a major nuisance, making me walk around with a book on my head to straighten my posture while rounding my ‘vowels’ and speaking through my ‘mask’ – my nose, not my throat. I’m not supposed to notice her imbibing her daily shot of green fairy absinthe from a flask she keeps hidden in her beaded bag.
She’s quite a character with her swinging, chin-length hair the color of a ripe pomegranate, her pencil-thin brows and smooch-y, red lipstick. When she’s not around, I mimic her cat-eyes with finely drawn, black cake eyeliner on my lids and then sashay through my apartment, pretending the pencil dangling from my lips is a long cigarette holder. I swirl my lace veil through the air, twirling and dancing free. I’m very protective of my convent keepsake and store it at the bottom of my garderobe. A reminder of where I came from, but I find Miss Brimwell’s approach to life fascinating and want to be like her.
Except I’m not.
Emil insists I keep my hair down to my waist because it’s how the fans want to see their Ninette. Angel-white hair that’s bleached every day when I’m shooting a picture. I want to be more like Miss Brimwell, prancing around in slinky, fringe dresses, but ‘sweet and innocent’ is my brand – Emil quotes like it’s a mantra.
I’m fed up with sweet and innocent. I have no social life. Rien. Nothing. I want to live. Act wild. How can I? I’m up every day at 6 a.m., cold porridge for breakfast with lots of coffee. Something I never drank at the convent.
Oh, how I miss Sister Vincent with her silver spectacles sliding down her nose when she’s praying, her finger
s moving over her black wooden rosary beads but also watching me, clearing her throat when she catches me daydreaming.
I secretly write to her as often as I can, telling her everything about my new life. I don’t tell her about the long hours and no sleep. I pretend I am Ninette and give her the happy ending she deserves after risking her position in the convent to help me. My Ninette serial is so popular in the village, she wrote to me, Monsieur Durand holds special showings for the nuns and members of the local clergy (Sister Ursula attended a showing and never said a word afterward). My days are filled with wardrobe fittings, dialogue coaching, makeup, hair, learning my lines. And the actual work, of which I’m so proud. I love acting… even when we work long into the night. One scene today took twenty-nine takes before Emil yelled, ‘Print!’
No wonder I’m so tired and fall asleep in my dressing room with the sister’s letters spread out on my lap. I pay for my lapse in judgment when Emil drops by to give me rewritten script pages for the next day. Till now I’ve kept her letters hidden, but I’m groggy and he grabs them before I can stop him. His face scrunches up. I know that look. He hates anything that challenges his authority over me.
‘I told you, Sylvie, to cut off all contact with everyone.’ He tears them up and tosses them back at me.
I jump to my feet, the sight of the nun’s lovely, blue handwriting in shreds sending me into a panic with a rush of fear that smothers me. ‘I can’t let you take away Sister Vincent’s letters… I can’t,’ I tell him, a long, guttural sob erupting from my throat.
‘You need only me. Without me, you’re nothing. Don’t ever forget that.’
Hot tears sting my eyes as I try to piece the letters back together, but he sweeps the torn papers out of my hands and then stomps on them with his brown alligator-laced shoe.
‘Remember this day, Sylvie, remember the pain you felt when I tore up your letters, the anger, fear, dread…’ he says with a firm control in his voice. ‘You can use it to better your skills as an actress, to bring up those emotions when a scene calls for such intense pain that it tears at your heart. The audience will know those raw emotions are real.’ A smirk. ‘And that, ma chérie, is what sells movie tickets.’
And the horrible, heartbreaking truth is… he’s right.
An actress has to pull up the best and the worst of her experiences. Bon. So I shall. That doesn’t change anything. I hate him and his fiendish need to control me, but somehow he’s always right. The French director uses his power over me to keep me in line. Telling me I owe everything I am to him. And I believe him because I want to.
Because I love what I’m doing. I’m an actress…
And a star.
7
Sylvie
Ninette grows up
Paris
1929
I cry when Emil insists it’s time to cut off my long hair.
I didn’t think I’d shed any tears let alone a steady flow when long strands of my platinum glory fall to the floor. A mantle of lost childhood surrounding me, silken threads like the strands the nuns use to weave their lace. A story lies behind each lace design and so it is with me. Winding my hair up in a long braid or curls and ringlets every day became my pattern of lace, something I can cling to as I find my way in this world of takes and retakes, bright lights and X marks on the floor showing me where to stand. Costumes too big for me pulled in with giant safety pins that come undone during my pratfalls and stick me in the butt. For all my talk about wanting to bob my hair like Miss Brimwell’s, inside I want to remain Ninette. I thought I could go on forever playing the angel come to earth to defeat evil.
That I’d never have to grow up and face life. Face the fact that in spite of the piling up franc notes in my bank account, a garderobe filled with fancy clothes and satin shoes, I have no freedom. Emil controls everything.
Even cutting my hair.
I’m also aware Emil is tuned into my strengths as well as my weaknesses, my ability to ‘feel’ a part and take direction from him without a word, merely a gesture like putting his finger to his cheek or raising his brows. As if I can read his mind. I shudder, knowing how strong his hold is on me, how he keeps me on a short leash. At first, I thought it was wonderful to have someone who cares for me – the truth is, I’m nothing to him but a film property bought and sold to the highest bidder at the studio.
Unlike Ninette, I didn’t defeat the devil.
I sold my soul to him.
I hunch down in the barber chair in the stuffy, studio makeup room, the mirror framed with hot, bare bulbs witnessing the shedding of my hair. My shoulders slump as I try to conceal my anguish from the cheeky stylist chewing gum and chatting nonstop about how much she loves me as Ninette, but ain’t it true ingénues have to grow up if you want to keep working in this business.
With the incessant snipping loud in my ears, she rambles on about a famous star she used to cut hair for, how the forty-something woman insisted on covering up her grey roots with henna and red dye though the only parts coming her way were dowager roles. Then one day she stopped coming in. Last she heard, the actress was working as a madam in the Saint-Denis district where her hair was redder than the girls who worked for her.
I chuckle as she expects me to do, but I find her story so sad. That’s never going to happen to me, I vow. Still, it’s a lesson learnt. Crying over cutting my girlish curls isn’t going to get me anywhere. It’s time Ninette grew up. I should be smart like the good girl I play and not complain about having no freedom, count myself lucky to have Emil watching out for me. Like Miss Brimwell says, a girl can’t always get what she wants, but if she’s smart she knows when to shut up and play a new angle.
So that’s what I do.
I dry my tears and start reading the script Emil sent over for me to read. A film about a wicked woman. My first grown-up role. The studio is eager for me to make a talkie and when the actress hired to play the lead jumped ship to go to Hollywood, Emil convinced them to give the role to me. It’s called Bébé de jazz (Jazz Baby) and is about a flapper who falls in love with a poor trumpet player but marries a rich, older banker. When she goes back to the trumpet player, the banker shoots her… and she dies in her lover’s arms.
The film is a box office flop.
Emil insists the reason the movie-going public didn’t buy me as a boozing flapper is because I’m still a virgin. I say it’s because they didn’t want to see their beloved Ninette go over to the dark side and lose the good girl image they love.
He insists I’m not Ninette anymore and the sooner I accept that the better off I am.
This is the first of many rows we have: some in public at his favorite table at the Hôtel Ritz, him looking across at me, arms folded, pouting while the waiter pours me another glass of sweet Anjou – my third in an hour – and others in private in my small apartment. It’s always the same. I come across on the screen as a child dressing up in her mother’s clothes, I don’t carry myself like a woman who knows how to seduce a man (I wish Miss Brimwell had been instructive in that department). And I don’t know how to kiss. He insists the way for me to make the transition from child actress to femme fatale is to lose my virginity.
I let out a screech that rips through me down to my toes and causes more than one head to turn in the famous Ritz dining salon. ‘How dare you suggest I – that you—’
‘Don’t look at me like that, Sylvie. I may be a lot of things – and no, don’t name them – but I’m not like that with my stable of stars.’
I furrow my brow. ‘Is that what you call your clients? A stable? What are we… goats… dairy cows to be farmed out at your whim?’ My voice sounds scratchy from my outburst. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Everyone in Paris knows the great Emil-Hugo de Ville keeps a special apartment on the Left Bank for his party girls.’
He doesn’t deny it as he signals the waiter for another bottle of brandy. ‘Every one of them beautiful… and willing.’ He straightens his bowtie and slicks back his deep ebony hair
with the finesse of a bullfighter about to enter the ring. ‘I’ve already made the arrangements for your… shall we call it, evening of pleasure. A young actor I have my eye on. Jean-Claude Remy is in need of seasoning before I sign him.’
‘You mean you want to see if he’ll jump through your hoops.’ A simple statement, but true. ‘And keep his mouth shut afterward.’
He smiles. ‘I’ve reserved a suite for you overlooking the Place Vendôme. You’ll have caviar, champagne… and the smoothest satin sheets so as not to mar your delicate skin.’
‘You’re insane, Emil… mad. I won’t do it.’
He leans closer, takes my hand – yes, I’m trembling – and holds it tight. ‘In certain cultures, it’s the duty of the father to choose his daughter’s first lover. Have I not been like a father to you, Sylvie?’
‘Yes…’ I’m reluctant to admit Emil has guided my career to a place I never dreamed. My name in lights on the theater marquee like he promised, adoring fans, pretty clothes. ‘But to think you’d sell my body so you can get your twenty-five per cent out of my hide…’
‘It’s for your own good, ma chère. Go out with Jean-Claude, go dancing at the Moulin Rouge, the theater, have fun… all expenses on me.’ He tips the waiter when he brings the brandy then shoos him away. He pours himself a drink, downs it quickly, and then smacks his lips. ‘From what the mamselles tell me, Jean-Claude is a stud in the sack.’
Jean-Claude is a drunk with sloppy lips, smelly hairy armpits, and a starfish birthmark on his right buttock I’m sure half the women in Paris have seen. The arrangement is far from memorable – I will spare you the requisite details to save us both embarrassment. He downs a bottle of champagne and it’s a miracle he can perform. When the evening reaches its climax (his, not mine), I know how that mother cat Sister Vincent and I found felt after giving birth to her litter and then being tossed out into the rain.