City of Flickering Light

by Juliette Fay

  “Yes, please.”

  “I’ll take another splash,” said Irene. “Thanks.”

  “How are you doing with house hunting?” Gert brought the pot over and freshened their cups.

  Irene grinned. “I’m looking at one right up the street!”

  “Gosh, that’s jake! Room for Millie and the baby?”

  “And a decent-size yard for the garden she keeps talking about.”

  “Have you told her yet?”

  “No, I thought I’d save it all for when she gets home. She’s had enough of learning big news from letters.”

  Irene and Dan had talked about getting a place together, which had precipitated a long conversation about the possibility of formally joining their lives, as well. Dan was in favor . . . but the more they talked about it, the more Irene realized she wasn’t ready to be someone’s wife and certainly not someone’s mother. She had a growing career in a growing industry and she was only twenty-two. There would be time for all the rest someday. But not quite yet.

  “Will Tip want coffee?” Henry asked. “I can perk another pot.”

  “Thanks, but he left hours ago. He’s got a show in San Francisco, so he’ll be back in a week.” Gert took her coffee and headed back up to her room but turned at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Irene, are you hurrying off?”

  “No, I’ve got some time.”

  “Henry, why don’t you get dressed and we can all go to the lot together.”

  “Yes, dear,” he said as he stood and headed for his bedroom. She rolled her eyes at him and continued up the stairs.

  Irene sipped her coffee and waited for her friends. It certainly was an unusual arrangement, Gert and Henry living together as husband and wife, while she carried on a love affair with another man (a dark-skinned one, no less) with Henry’s full knowledge and approval. Irene hoped he would find love again, too, and she prepared herself to be as welcoming to his new love as she wished she’d been to Edward.

  Her own circumstances were almost as unorthodox. She had a loving and devoted man, yet no interest in marriage. She was about to purchase her very own home and would soon be joined by the ever-impetuous Millie Martin and her “adopted” daughter.

  Ivy Sage Martin. When she got older, how would they explain it all to her?

  Friendship would be their only defense.

  We were friends, they would say. We would’ve done anything for one another.

  Author’s Note

  Many months of research went into writing City of Flickering Light, and I wish I could have included even more of the fascinating information I learned in the process. Here’s a little further detail on some of the people, places, films, and history behind the story.

  The three main characters are completely fictional, although Millie sometimes channeled a bit of Jean Harlow’s sensuality, humor, and preference for skimping on underwear. Some of the secondary characters, however, are loosely based on real people.

  Edward Oberhauser was patterned after well-respected director William Desmond Taylor, who was shot in his apartment on February 1, 1922. At the time of his death, he’d been in a years-long relationship with art director George James Hopkins. His murder remains unsolved. It was at first speculated that his friend Mabel Normand, who had left shortly before the likely time of the murder, was involved. Normand was known to overindulge in alcohol and drugs, and Taylor was a good friend who wanted to help her. Starlet Mary Miles Minter was madly in love with Taylor, and her extremely protective mother was also a suspect. Finally, there was a deathbed confession of former actress Margaret Gibson. For more on this fascinating story, I recommend Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann

  Hazel Hampton was inspired by Mabel Normand, a brilliant comedienne and star of more than two hundred films. She never got over the death of her dear friend William Desmond Taylor and died of tuberculosis in 1930 at the age of thirty-seven.

  Eva Crown was based on Frances Marion, one of the most prolific, respected, and highest paid screenwriters of all time, who also acted in, directed, and produced many films. She won Academy Awards for best screenplay for The Big House and The Champ and was able to maintain her high standing in an extremely competitive industry for more than thirty years. Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood by Cari Beauchamp is a wonderful, information-packed read.

  Carlton Sharp was inspired by Howard Strickling, who began working for Metro Studios in 1919 and was head of publicity at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer until 1969. He promoted and protected stars such as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland.

  Herbert Vanderslice was not based on Cecil B. DeMille, though they shared a love of snappy dressing and splashy films with high production costs. DeMille was a far more talented director than Vanderslice could ever have hoped to be.

  As a rule, I tried to use buildings and locations from the time period that still exist today. A few of them opened a year or two after the novel takes place, but are so iconic I decided to include them.

  The old Warner Brothers Studio, 5800 Sunset Boulevard, was the inspiration for the Olympic Studio lot. It was built in 1919 and used by Warner Brothers for their main offices and central studio. In 1937, the studio consolidated its locations in Burbank, and the building was converted to a sports center with a bowling alley. Now called Sunset Bronson Studios, it has reverted to its original use as a film production facility.

  Musso & Frank Grill, 6667 Hollywood Boulevard, opened in 1919. It boasts the first pay phone to be installed in Hollywood (the phone booth is still there), and was an upscale favorite of film folk. The food is unabashedly retro—and delicious.

  Hollywood Athletic Club, 6525 Sunset Boulevard, was founded by Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and Cecil B. DeMille in 1924. It charged a $150 initiation fee and $10 for monthly dues. Membership included John Wayne, John Ford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Mae West, and Joan Crawford.

  The Iris Theatre, 6508 Hollywood Boulevard, was built in 1918 and opened with Birth of a Nation. Carol Burnett worked there as an usher in her teens. It has undergone several remodels and name changes, from the Fox Theatre in the 1960s (the sign remains) to the current Playhouse Nightclub.

  The Egyptian Theatre, 6706 Hollywood Boulevard, opened in 1922 and was the site of the first ever movie premiere, Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, on October 18, 1922. Its Egyptian theme reflected the world’s fascination with the search for King Tut’s tomb, which was discovered two weeks after the theater opened. Original plans called for a Hispanic design, but when the plans were changed, red tile for the roof had already been ordered. It was installed and remains today.

  The HOLLYWOODLAND sign was built in 1923 by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler as an advertisement for his new real estate development. Costing $21,000 and lit with four thousand twenty-watt bulbs, it was intended to remain for only eighteen months but soon became iconic of the movie industry and was left in place. LAND was removed when it was refurbished in 1949 so that it no longer represented the housing development but the district.

  Mulholland Drive opened on December 27, 1924. It follows a ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains, with panoramic views of Hollywood, Los Angeles, and beyond to the south, and the San Fernando Valley to the north. Construction facilitated the development of the canyons of the Hollywood hills, while also providing generations of car enthusiasts with opportunities to risk life, limb, and property speeding along it, including John Carradine, Gary Cooper, and, of course, James Dean.

  The Alto Nido apartment building, 1851 N. Ivar Avenue, was made famous as the home of writer Joe Gillis (played by William Holden) in Sunset Boulevard.

  The Hillview Apartments, 6533 Hollywood Boulevard, was built in 1918 by studio heads Jesse Lasky and Sam Goldwyn for people in the film industry because they were often discriminated against by lo
cal landlords. Movie star tenants included Clara Bow, Stan Laurel, Viola Dana, Barbara La Marr, and Mary Astor.

  Laurel Canyon, where the main characters purchase homes at the end of the story and live in unorthodox arrangements, was famous in the 1960s for the similarly unconventional lifestyles of the rock and folk musicians who gravitated there. These include Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, Peter Tork of the Monkees, Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, and Glenn Frey of the Eagles.

  These buildings and locations were fun to visit and imagine the people who might have passed through. Unfortunately, some historic Hollywood buildings have been demolished.

  The original Hollywood Studio Club, 6129 Carlos Avenue, was a pillared Colonial that served as the HSC’s first home in 1916, with Marion Hunter as its director. Demand for lodging quickly grew, and in 1926 the YWCA opened newly built quarters at 1215 Lodi Place. All of the studios contributed to construction costs. Famous residents include Dorothy Malone, Barbara Eden, Donna Reed, Rita Moreno, and Marilyn Monroe, who posed for nude pictures to make money to pay her rent at the club. The Hollywood Studio Club ended its run in 1975, but the second building still stands and serves as a YWCA.

  The Hollywood Hotel, 6811 Hollywood Boulevard, built in 1902, held legendary Thursday night dances that made it the place to see and be seen. Many film industry people stayed or lived there, including Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer, and Ethel Barrymore. Rudolph Valentino lived in room 264 and reportedly met both of his wives, Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova, there. Deteriorating after its heyday, it was demolished in 1956.

  The Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Boulevard, opened in 1921, and its Cocoanut Grove nightclub quickly became synonymous with movie stars and glamour, inspiring similarly named venues across the country. It was often used as a filming location for upscale hotel scenes, such as Jean Harlow’s Bombshell, The Graduate, and Pretty Woman. Around the time of Robert Kennedy’s assassination there in 1968, the hotel went into decline and was demolished in 2005 to make way for the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Mae Murray did live in one of the bungalows on the property for a time.

  The Garden of Alla, 8152 Sunset Boulevard (which at the time was unpaved west of Fairfax Avenue), was purchased in 1918 by major film star Alla Nazimova. It immediately became known for its hedonistic parties, which included Nazimova’s “sewing circles” of lesbian film stars. From then until its demolition in 1959, it attracted a who’s who of film, literary, and music circles. Residents included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Harpo Marx, Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, and Ronald Reagan.

  As much as possible I wanted to use actual films of the time, so I “borrowed” several.

  The Queen of Sheba (1921) did star Betty Blythe and Fritz Leiber, but it was actually directed by J. Gordon Edwards from a scenario by Virginia Tracy. Miss Blythe was known to speak her mind, though it’s not clear how salty her language may have been in private or how much, if any, she drank. I took a bit of literary license with that, and I apologize for any misrepresentation. The film was tremendously successful, in large part due to the scantiness of Miss Blythe’s costumes, one of which involved only a string of pearls from the waist up. The completely topless scenes were shown only in Europe, but the American cut was hardly puritanical.

  Beyond the Rocks (1922)—referred to as Behind Her Socks in the novel—was based on the novel by Elinor Glyn and starred Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, who were paid $12,500 and $1,000 a week, respectively. It was the only movie in which the two extremely popular stars worked together. Though there were scenes set in Africa and the Alps, the entire picture was filmed in California. It was thought to be one of the many lost silent films until a copy was found after the death of an anonymous Dutch collector in 2004.

  The story The Vanishing American by Zane Grey was first published in serial form in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1922 to 1923. It was even more scathing with regard to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and white missionaries than the book, which was published in 1925. The movie premiered in 1925 and was much diluted in its presentation of white malfeasance. I was also disappointed to see that the main character, Nophaie, was played by white actor Richard Dix wearing a lot of reddish-brown greasepaint.

  The historical events and circumstances woven into the story are all factual. The songs used were all popular hits of the early 1920s. Product, price, retailer, and promotional text information was generally taken from actual advertisements in the Hollywood Citizen of the time.

  Prohibition, the ban on the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol, was instituted as federal law in January 1920. It had far less of an impact on Hollywood than it did in most other areas of the country. There were countless speakeasies, or blind pigs as they were sometimes known, and most people of means had access to bootleggers.

  Drugs like morphine, heroin, and cocaine were widely available in Hollywood, and their use by stars sometimes progressed to addiction. Studio doctors were known to give morphine to injured stars in order to get them working again. Thus when Wallace Reid was in a train crash on his way to film The Valley of the Giants in 1919 and suffered a head injury, he was injected with morphine to dull his headaches so he could work. Similarly, when Barbara La Marr sprained her ankle on the set of Souls for Sale in 1923, she was given morphine. Both became addicted, and their deaths were directly related.

  When heroin was first developed by the Bayer Company in the 1890s, it was thought to be a nonaddictive derivative of morphine and was on every drugstore shelf, marketed simply as heroin. Cough syrup often contained the drug, as it suppresses breathing and consequently makes one cough less.

  By 1914 the addictive nature of morphine, heroin, and cocaine had become clear, and federal law made it illegal to purchase without a doctor’s prescription, making it harder but not impossible to obtain. It wasn’t until 1924 that the Heroin Act made the drug completely illegal.

  Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was at the pinnacle of his career in 1921, rivaling Charlie Chaplin in popularity, reportedly making a million dollars a year. On September 5, he held a party in rooms at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, which was attended by Virginia Rappe, a Hollywood hopeful. She suffered peritonitis from a ruptured bladder, likely brought on by a recent abortion, and died four days later. Her friend Maude Delmont, a known blackmailer, told authorities the cause was Arbuckle’s great weight when he forced himself on Rappe. This was fueled by overeager District Attorney Matthew Brady and by yellow journalism, most notably at the behest of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Two juries failed to convict Arbuckle, and the third exonerated him after one minute of deliberation, stating, “Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him.” Nevertheless, his films were banned, his career ruined, and he died a broken man eleven years later at the age of forty-six.

  The history of the Navajo or Diné people reaches back approximately one thousand years in the Four Corners area of present day Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. Nevertheless, in what was a “scorched-earth” campaign conducted by Colonel Kit Carson in 1863, the Navajo were forced to march some three hundred miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, during which many died. In 1868, a reservation for the Navajo was negotiated in their original homelands. It was far smaller than their original territory, and in return, they were forced to send their children to schools set up by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, which would assimilate them to European American customs. Children were punished for speaking their native language or following traditional ways and were often used as forced manual labor. Greenthread tea, mentioned in the novel, is a traditional tea of the Navajo, and I must say that I’ve become a fan.

  Taxi dancers, or dime-a-dance girls as they were often called, were employed to dance with men for pay. Patrons would buy tickets for ten cents apiece, entitling them to dance with the girl of their choice for one song. The girls were on commission, usually paid five cents for every ticket t
hey turned in at the end of the night. These dance halls were closed to women who didn’t work there and were not considered terribly reputable.

  Unplanned pregnancy was a fairly common problem in the film industry. Studios strongly encouraged abortions, as it was the quickest way to get an actress back on the job, however, bearing the child and later adopting it was also an option. Barbara La Marr, a silent star known as “The Girl Who Is Too Beautiful,” became pregnant in 1922. Upon birth, the child was taken to Dallas, Texas, where several months later, Barbara was to attend the opening of a car show. She staged a serendipitous trip to a local orphanage, where she pretended to see her son for the first time and spontaneously adopted him on the spot.

  Max Factor, born Maksymilian Faktorowicz in 1877, immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1904 and soon headed for California to sell makeup and wigs to the burgeoning film industry. Greasepaint made for the stage was far too thick to look right on screen, and he was the first to develop makeup specifically designed for use by film actors and actresses. “Flexible greasepaint” was a revolution, and he went on to create many more products for the industry. He developed personalized makeup for major movie stars such as Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford, riding his bike to the studios to apply it personally in the early days. His company was instrumental in the proliferation of makeup for nonactresses, which was not generally considered respectable before the 1920s.

  For those interested in learning more about the silent movie era, Hollywood, a thirteen-part documentary by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, is an entertaining and information-packed series, with silent film footage and interviews with former stars, such as Colleen Moore, Viola Dana, and Gloria Swanson.