by Juliette Fay
Rehearsal was going well. Betty Blythe was resplendent in her virtual nakedness, and Henry had to admit that however coarse or alcohol-soaked she might get, the woman knew how to make it look good on film. Fritz Leiber also appeared to have recommitted himself to his art, setting aside his wit and maintaining his kingly bearing even between takes.
By the late afternoon, they were working on a part of the scene where Betty and one of her handmaidens—Gert Turner, Henry was happy to see—were wringing their hands over her unexpected pregnancy as they prepared to leave. The rest of the extras were set loose to roam the lot, and Henry took the opportunity to stretch his legs with a walk behind the “palace,” where a small herd of guards in their metallic costumes were smoking and rolling dice in the dirt.
Farther along, a handmaiden was slipping a sandwich under the canvas siding that surrounded the set. When she saw the look of confusion on Henry’s face she hissed, “My husband’s out there and he hasn’t had work in three weeks, so mind your own potatoes!”
Beside a tree he saw his chariot-driving friend Ray kissing one of the blonder handmaidens with an ardor that the poor girl could hardly keep up with, as her dark red lipstick migrated from her chin to the tip of her nose.
They were all called back, and at last they were ready to put the whole sweeping scene together. Betty began her regal procession from the palace doors, but Edward yelled cut before she’d taken more than three steps.
“Present my compliments to the two gentlemen at the back,” he called peevishly through his megaphone, “but unless those cigarettes are rolled in papyrus, they are historically inaccurate. And someone give that chariot driver’s face a dusting. I don’t know how, but he’s gotten lipstick on his forehead.”
A titter rippled across the set, but the laughter was not energetic. The cast knew Edward’s waning patience was not something to be fooled with. After a long day that was the culmination of a hell of a week, Henry himself was looking forward to enjoying a beverage at whatever blind pig he happened upon first. He’d likely round up the girls, as well, and get all the details on Millie’s screen test. He dearly hoped it had gone well.
Edward must have been reading his thoughts, because once the rehearsal was over, with the usual pandemonium of cast, crew, props, and equipment heading for the exit, he strolled casually toward Henry, nodding and smiling at the scurrying masses.
“I wonder if you might like to join me for a drink tonight,” he murmured when he was certain no one was in earshot.
Henry waited for the now-lit bombs to detonate in his stomach. But it didn’t feel like explosions . . . so much as butterflies. Edward, with his aquiline nose and regal bearing. And very lovely hazel eyes. His restraint. And his lack of it.
“Oh, I, uh . . .” Henry stammered. And then he felt it. The grenade of his own shame and anxiety going off. “I’m sorry, but I already have plans.”
“Another time, then.” Edward’s smooth face did not register the slightest disappointment, but Henry knew it was there. Edward had been brave enough to make his interest known. Henry, on the other hand, was the coward once again.
As he watched Edward’s tall frame recede, more fuses igniting in his gut, Gert Turner walked up and hooked him by the arm. “Drinks?” she said.
“And lots of ’em.”
28
No amount of dialogue can express the sweet, sincere and invariably speechless emotion we call love.
Norma Taldmadge, actress, producer
Irene sat at her typewriter, distracted by her desperate hope that Millie might receive a positive review for her screen test. They needed the money, of course—they already owed Henry so much, not to mention two dollars to Dan for the dinner he’d paid for at The Cottonwood—but more importantly she was worried about Millie’s spirits. She’d been so low, and working had made her so happy. As vulnerable and gullible as she was, if she went back to haunting the streets and alleys of Hollywood . . . Irene didn’t like to think about who might get their hooks in her.
Irene was doubly distracted by the fact that she’d heard nothing from Eva Crown. Honestly, how long did it take to read a couple of paragraphs, anyway?
When the door to the typing pool opened, Irene didn’t look up. Miss Clemente had gone off to deliver some typed continuity scripts, and Irene assumed it was her. Then she heard a little gasp, as if the person who’d opened the door couldn’t breathe.
Millie’s face was smudged and wet, with eyeliner striping down her cheeks. Irene jumped up and hurried across the room, aware that all the other typewriters had suddenly gone silent. She guided Millie out to the hallway and closed the door behind her. Millie collapsed against her, and Irene had to hang on to her to keep her from sliding to the floor.
“My God! What happened!”
Millie was crying so hard she could barely inhale, but she finally gasped out, “Wally.”
“Where? What did he do?”
“Screen test.”
“Where the hell was Vanderslice?”
Millie swiped her eyes against the shoulder of her dress, leaving muddy stripes of white, tan, and black. “He was at Dan’s test,” she panted.
“And Wally directed your screen test?”
Millie nodded.
Irene grabbed her by the shoulders. “Did he hurt you?”
“He . . . he just . . . scared me!”
“How? How did he scare you?”
Her sobbing had become little gasps she struggled to speak around. “He was so . . . mean. He said awful things. I tried to stay calm, but he . . . he got too close to me and I . . . I panicked.” She started to cry again in earnest. “I ran away. I was so afraid he would touch me!”
Irene pulled Millie into her arms. “You’re safe now. You never have to go back there.”
Over Millie’s shoulder, Irene saw Miss Clemente, stopped midstride, watching them.
“I’m sorry, Miss Clemente. My friend—”
“Your friend shouldn’t be here in such a state.”
“I’ll work through my lunch and powder room break to make up for it.”
“Just take her home.”
Irene hurried back to the typing pool just as the other girls were leaving for lunch. She tugged an old handkerchief with fraying edges from her purse and dabbed at her damp forehead and neck, nodding her gratitude at Miss Clemente, who hadn’t left yet for some reason.
Irene sat down and stared at the typewriter a moment, willing herself to concentrate. Then she rolled in a piece of fresh paper, pulled a handwritten page from the stack, and began to type.
“What was all that about?” Miss Clemente demanded.
Irene looked up. “My friend was just upset. Thank you for letting me—”
“I could see that. Why was she upset?”
“She had a screen test, and it didn’t go well.”
Miss Clemente opened her purse and squinted into it, looking for something. “You asked if the director had hurt her.”
How could Irene explain that one? And why was Miss Clemente asking so many questions?
“You used his first name.”
“She had a date with him about a month ago, and he . . . well, he wasn’t nice.”
“She seemed terrified.” Miss Clemente’s glare remained trained into her purse, as if she might find the fountain of youth in there. Or at least some magic cream to smooth all those pockmarks.
Irene shook her head. “It’s my fault,” she said bitterly. “The next day I confronted him, and I guess it made him mad, because he took it out on her.”
Miss Clemente’s gaze rose from her purse, small brown eyes blazing.
That evening when Irene came down the stairs from the typing pool, there was a figure leaning against the wall in the shade of the building. “Dan! How did it go?”
“Seemed all right. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” A shy pride belied his casual tone. “How’d it go for Millie? I went to Stage Eight, but they must have finished before I got there.”
>
“Not that well.” Irene met his gaze. “The director was hard on her.”
“It wasn’t . . .” A fury ignited behind his eyes. “Don’t tell me it was Wally.” Before she could even respond, the heel of his palm suddenly slammed against the wall. “He scared the hell out of her on set,” Dan seethed. “And he enjoyed it, the son of a bitch.”
Irene’s stomach sank. “She didn’t tell me.”
“Vanderslice loved her. He only wanted to see me because he wasn’t sure of me. He was sure of her, though. He said the screen test was just a formality. Something to show the producers. She had it sewn up—until that bastard came along.”
“I have to go. She’s waiting for me.” Dan didn’t ask if he should come, too, only got in stride with Irene as she hurried silently toward the Studio Club.
But Millie was not waiting for her. The house director said she’d left hours before. A trickle of anger bubbled through Irene’s anxiety. Wasn’t it just like her to go off and do something foolish, and not consider the consequences? Just like the damned tea set.
At that moment, Gert Turner came down the curved staircase. She smiled at the sight of Irene, then her smile faded. “Well, you look like you just grabbed the wrong end of the poker.”
“Have you seen Millie?”
Gert shook her head. “What’s the rub?”
“She had a screen test today. She’d had a date with the fellow who directed a while back, and he wasn’t . . . gentlemanly. Wasn’t happy about her getting a screen test, either.”
“Son of a bitch scared the hell out of her, and she bolted,” said Dan.
“Jesus,” Gert breathed, and shook her head. “This town . . .”
“I just want to find her. She’s not exactly the queen of common sense.”
Gert squinted in thought. “I was about to meet Henry for a drink. You two take Hollywood Boulevard, and we can take Sunset. Whoever finds her, meet back here.”
“Gert, you don’t have to—”
“What am I supposed to do? Drink and laugh like everything’s jake?”
When they got to Hollywood Boulevard and headed west through town, Irene told Dan he didn’t have to come. “I’m sure you have better things to do on a Friday night, and you live around here, don’t you? I can manage. I’m used to fending for myself.”
“I know you can fend for yourself, Irene. But it’s getting dark, and I’m worried about her, too.”
Irene stopped. “Why? Why are you the least bit concerned about any of this? You met her, what—three days ago? She’s not your problem.”
He leveled a look at her that made her hold her breath for a second. “She’s not yours either,” he said after a moment. “But here we are.”
As they neared Cahuenga Boulevard and passed the Nash automobile dealership, they saw a crowd of people on the sidewalk by the new Security Trust and Savings Bank. There was a movie camera and crew members filming three young men dressed in military uniforms.
“Someone’s always filming here,” Dan commented.
“Why’s that?”
“Big, new fancy building, close to the studios. The crew can walk back for lunch.” They scanned the onlookers for any sign of Millie, without luck. They stopped in at Kress Drug on the opposite corner, with its long lunch counter and countless unguents, ablutions, and salves, but the place was empty save for an older couple sitting on stools at the counter sharing a sardine sandwich, and three teenage girls sniffing the perfume bottles at the end of the aisle.
They crisscrossed their way down Hollywood Boulevard, dodging Model Ts and sporty coupes, Dan checking a diner on the north side of the street while Irene scanned a hat shop on the south. They both went into the Iris Theatre, bought the cheapest nickel tickets, and then crept along the outer aisles, searching for Millie’s face in the coruscated glow of flickering light.
A few blocks down, the finishing touches were being put on a huge new theater painted to look like an Egyptian tomb. Mama Ringa’s was a couple of blocks north. Could Millie have gone there looking for her?
She had to tell Dan to wait in the overgrown, sun-scorched yard.
“Not even on the porch?”
Irene shook her head, and Dan tugged the wide brim of his black felt fedora down a little on his forehead and crossed his arms. She nearly ran Mama Ringa over in her haste to get up to her room to see if Millie was there.
“What in the . . .” Ringa muttered as she staggered back a step. “Where are you stampeding off to?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m looking for Millie. Have you seen her?”
Ringa looked away. “She and Agnes went out.”
“Went out where?” Irene demanded.
Ringa waved her away. “Wherever girls go on a Friday night.”
“Where do your girls go,” Irene hissed, “to their everlasting disgrace?”
“Watch yourself.” Ringa’s voice was full of quiet menace. “I can fill your bed in the time it takes to say ‘Pack your bag.’ Girls like you are a dime a dozen.”
The Hollywood Harem was on the outskirts of West Hollywood. “It’s just dancing,” Ringa often said with that motherly smile she twisted off and on like the wheel handle of a garden spigot. “A pleasant way to earn a few extra dollars.”
The name alone had been enough to make the fine hairs on the nape of Irene’s neck stand at attention. Then she’d learned it was a “closed” dance hall, meaning closed to women who didn’t work there. Only men could get in, the kind who wanted or needed to pay for dances, instead of going to a normal hall and simply asking a girl to dance for free.
“That’s a good hike from here,” said Dan when she told him.
“Agnes must have paid for a cab. Millie doesn’t have a nickel.” Though with her looks and a share of the ten cents she’d get for each dance, she probably had plenty of nickels by now.
“I’ll flag one down. And I’ll pay for it. I know your situation.”
“You work pretty steady now?”
“Cowboys and injuns.” He hit the last word with a hint of derision. “America never tires of them.”
The Hollywood Harem was doing a brisk business by the time Dan and Irene arrived at eight o’clock. Of course, Irene could only know this from the stream of men entering. She wasn’t allowed to go in and see for herself, and for this reason alone, she was grateful for Dan’s help.
As she stood on the sidewalk, arms crossed around her, more to shield herself from the ogling eyes of Harem customers than from the chill in the air, Irene got a fuller picture of Hollywood’s seedy side than she’d ever hoped to have. Men catcalling and pinching a girl as she arrived for work. Money and small packages changing hands through the windows of cars. A bedraggled young man hunched in a doorway; a car pulled up, the doors opened, he was unceremoniously hauled in, and the car drove off. It was as if he’d never been there at all.
The minutes ticked by and still no Dan or Millie. Irene began to imagine the worst, and it occurred to her that there were places Millie might be that Dan couldn’t follow, like the ladies’ powder room. Besides, standing out here alone, she was starting to attract stares and unwanted attention. When a man approached, greasy haired and snaggletoothed, and asked if she were “free for some fun,” she hurried toward the employee entrance of the Harem and slipped in with several other girls.
She followed them down a long dimly lit hallway that smelled like an ashtray spritzed with cheap perfume. There was a door on the right scrawled with LADYS, and most of the girls headed through it. Inside, they lounged on faded couches and smoked, or leaned toward the long chipped mirror to apply fresh lipstick in garish too-bright colors. Irene got a whiff of something foreign, a smell more earthy than tobacco smoke and wondered if someone was burning herbs somewhere in the place.
“Millie!” she called. “Millie Martin, are you in here?”
A few of the girls looked up, but most went on doing whatever they’d been doing. Only one responded. She put a finger in her ear and moaned,
“Stop yelling.”
Irene found her way out to the hall itself, a cavernous room with a wood floor and chairs with small tables scattered about the edges. A handful of the most enterprising girls sat at the tables closest to the dance floor, legs crossed to showcase taut calves, chests thrown out to showcase other things. Irene had expected that the kinds of girls who took a job like taxi-dancing would be obviously damaged in some way—cross-eyed or scarred, too bony or too fat—and a few of them were. But most were not. Most looked more or less like her or Millie.
The men who bought the rights to these girls for exactly one dance, however, were not nearly as presentable. Short, fat, balding, pockmarked, bespectacled, ill-smelling, badly dressed, unsmiling, laughing too loud, or more likely a combination thereof—these were men who found it difficult to get girls to dance just because they asked. The place smelled of sweat, smoke, and desperation.
“I got her.” Dan was suddenly beside her.
Millie was leaning into him, smiling wanly. “Irene,” she purred, slow and sloppy, “you’re here.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Irene breathed.
“Let’s get her out the door before the manager figures out she’s gone.”
Millie was perfectly capable of walking, but she kept veering off, as if her world were no longer made of three dimensions, but five or six. Dan kept a firm grip on her till they got outside. Irene hailed a cab, and they packed Millie in, so seemingly boneless it was like pushing dough into a bread pan. But they had no idea where to tell the cabbie to go.
“We can’t take her to the Studio Club like this,” said Irene. “They’ll kick her right out. And even if they didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to stay overnight with her.”
“Well, you’re not going back to that boardinghouse.”
They had the cabbie stop at the Studio Club so they could leave a message for Henry and Gert. Then they went to the Alto Nido building up the hill on Ivar Avenue. Dan’s studio apartment was small but uncluttered, with a little wooden table up against the window, sections of the Hollywood Citizen fanned haphazardly across it by the breeze. An upholstered love seat with carved wooden legs sat against one wall, and Irene guided Millie to sit down.