The Silver Blonde

by Elizabeth Ross

  “That’s just it,” said Clara in a conspiratorial tone. “No one wants to call her out.”

  “Sure thing,” said Doris with a knowing smile. She went to a filing cabinet. “What’s the production number?”

  Clara’s heart leapt as she said the numbers aloud: “SP three-one-nine-one.” Hopefully talk of stock footage wouldn’t arouse interest, let alone suspicion.

  Clara craned her neck to watch Doris with her coral nails flip rapidly through the file folders. She stopped on a file and skimmed its contents. “Here it is.” She pulled it out of the filing cabinet and closed the drawer. “Movie called Amazon Queen. Looks like they had a script, did some prep work, a day of camera tests—is that what you’re looking for?”

  “Camera tests?” said Clara, her mind whirring. “Yes, sure. That must be why we couldn’t find it with stock footage.”

  Doris nodded. “I’ve got a few purchase orders for film stock and camera rentals. The test was in December ’38, a small crew on location. Looks like they had a script and found a director. But the production never got off the ground. The film was scrapped.”

  Clara racked her brains. Amazon Queen. She’d never heard of it. “Who was the director?” she asked, offhand, as though barely interested.

  Doris squinted at the page, ran her finger across a line of type. “Director by the last name of Richard.” She squinted at it. “No, that’s not it.” She put the file down on the counter in front of Clara and went to another cabinet. “Hang on. Let me check something.”

  Clara gazed at the manila folder as if she could see through it. She was about to sneak a glimpse at it when Rita glided over on her rolling chair. She picked up a stapler from Doris’s desk and snapped its mouth around a sheaf of papers. “I heard you’re dating the screenwriter,” she said, her eyes bright. “He’s handsome.” She smirked. “A bit morose for my taste.”

  “We’re…friends,” said Clara haltingly. But were they more than that? The kiss in his apartment. Then the cops pounding on the door.

  “Leave her alone,” said Doris, returning with a folder. She laid it on the counter and took out a piece of paper. “Found the director’s contract.” She waved it triumphantly. “Producers love to misplace things—we make copies of everything. So the name’s not ‘Richard.’ It’s ‘Richter.’ Never heard of him.” She tilted her head. “Does that help?”

  Clara’s throat was suddenly tight. “Can I look at that?” She gave Doris a hopeful smile.

  Doris shrugged. “Don’t see why not—it was years ago.”

  Clara took the paper and tried to still her trembling fingers. Her breathing was shallow, and a prickle of sweat threatened to dampen her blouse. A contract in black and white: a three-picture deal between Silver Pacific and L. Richter. First picture titled Amazon Queen. Clara was back in the first-class Winter Garden with the glamorous Fräulein Richter, hearing her traveling companion. Nom de voyage. Even the ship’s cat must know you’re on board.

  Clara’s eyes greedily scanned the fine print. Richter would write the screenplay and direct. It was signed by Conrad Pearce and L. Richter in Palm Springs on December 15, 1938. Witness: C. Milligan.

  “You okay?” asked Doris.

  Clara used all her willpower to contain the gasp and to maintain the appearance of nonchalance. But reading that signature, the hairs on her arms stood up. “Yes.” She pasted on a smile. “Thanks for checking.” Clara went to hand it back but then stopped. “Doris, you mind if I hang on to this? Simkin is such a stickler. She’ll want me to produce evidence.”

  Doris rolled her eyes theatrically. “I know the type. Sure, just bring it back later.”

  “Thanks,” said Clara. “I really appreciate it.” And she meant it. Maybe the accounting girls weren’t so bad after all.

  Her performance over, Clara stepped out of the accounting office as though in a dream, her limbs thick and heavy as if she had forgotten how to walk. But her mind was racing.

  * * *

  —

  Back in editorial, Clara ran into Sam in the corridor. He was heading off to a meeting with the composer and music editor. “Clara, we need to talk,” he said.

  She nodded, gripping the piece of paper from accounting. Clara knew she was on thin ice with her job, but Leni’s contract and where it fit into the puzzle was all she could think about.

  “At the end of the day,” said Sam soberly. “After the Argentan screening.”

  As soon as Clara shut the cutting room door, she opened her file drawer. She had all the Leni clippings from the LA Times in a manila folder. She flicked through the articles. Amazon Queen. That title sounded familiar, or something like it. She skimmed through the articles until she found what she was looking for. She put the clipping in her purse next to the contract Doris had given her. Then she picked up the phone and dialed the switchboard. “Writers’ building. Mr. Gilbert, please.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sunset

  CLARA ARRANGED TO MEET Gil for an early lunch at a diner on Sunset. It was only eleven-thirty a.m. But the walls had ears at the studio, and she needed to tell him what she had discovered in accounting, without the possibility of anyone overhearing. When she arrived, he was already studying the menu in a booth by the window. She felt a surge of excitement, walking toward his table. Was it the paper in her purse, or seeing him for the first time since the night in his apartment? She couldn’t distinguish between the two. She squeaked along the red vinyl opposite him. “Hi,” she said, a little breathless.

  “Do I need a code word or something?” he said. “What’s so hush-hush?”

  “I figured something out, something big.”

  The waitress passed their table. “Be with you in a minute, folks.”

  He handed her the menu. “Figure this out first. I’m ordering lunch.”

  “Gil, this is important.”

  “I can’t take two lunch breaks, so I’m ordering something. This better be good, whatever it is—dragging me up to Sunset.” He threw her a small smile to show he was kidding.

  Clara looked at the menu, not reading the words. The familiarity of their teasing banter reassured her. She hadn’t known what to expect. Saturday night at his place—French brandy, the kiss, Ireland and Rivetti barging in and throwing accusations around—it all felt like a surreal dream.

  After they ordered, Clara laid out everything she had been waiting to spill from her chat with Bannon. Bannon and Connie had been friends; Bannon had gotten Connie the job as her stand-in; and the juiciest part was that Connie had known some secret to use as leverage against the studio, which had to have been something to do with Leni. And then Clara shared her discovery in accounting—that the phone number on Connie’s script was actually a production number, and how everything had all unraveled from there until she’d had her hands on the contract.

  Gil shook his head, incredulous. “Wait, Pearce signed her for a three-picture deal?” He lowered his voice. “Leni Riefenstahl—are you sure?” He blinked at her, dumbfounded.

  Clara felt a rush as she opened her purse and retrieved the contract Doris had given her. She handed it to Gil carefully, as though it were coated in gold leaf. “It’s signed L. Richter—which was her pseudonym on the Europa.”

  The waitress interrupted with their coffees. “Here you go, folks.” She saved her best smile for Gil. She was pretty—they all were in Hollywood. She sashayed away, giving him a nice view, but Gil’s eyes were glued to the contract.

  Clara continued: “Hollywood moguls had made a habit of signing European talent—Louis B. Mayer with Marlene Dietrich and Hedy Lamarr. Of course, the difference was that Marlene and Hedy were fleeing Nazi Europe. They weren’t wearing the crown of Führer’s Favorite Fräulein.”

  “That’s some gall on Pearce’s part,” said Gil. “What was this Amazon Queen project? I never heard of it.”

 
“It was Leni’s next project, her dream project: Penthesilea. It’s based on the Greek myth about the queen of the Amazons and her tragic love story with Achilles.”

  “Pensa-what?” Gil smirked. “No wonder they changed the name.”

  Clara took the LA Times clipping from her purse.

  Gil peered at her purse. “You got a filing cabinet in there?”

  She smiled for a second, but then was back to business. “Leni mentioned the film project in interviews when she was over here.” She ran her finger down the article. “Here it is. ‘Her career? Hollywood? She has plans that will keep her engrossed elsewhere for the next ten years. Her next picture will be filmed in Germany, Tripoli, and Greece in the spring. It will be titled Penthesilea—a Greek saga, and in it she will play the title role, a leader of the Amazons.’ Amazon Queen. It sounded familiar, so I checked back through all the clippings I’d read, and there it was.”

  “Good job, Clara.” Gil nodded as the picture formed in his mind. “Like any savvy director, she was talking up her next project, to attract interest, drum up funding.”

  “And someone was paying attention,” said Clara.

  “Pearce’s parents meet Leni on the Europa, talk up their son Conrad, who’s in movies,” said Gil, recapping their theory. “Pearce meets Leni, invites her to Palm Springs to get away from the bad publicity. But his plan isn’t simply to buy US rights to Olympia. It’s far more ambitious. It’s her next picture he wants, and her Hollywood career.”

  “There’s something else,” said Clara. “Doris in accounting mentioned that there was a camera test for Amazon Queen—back in December 1938. She had some purchase orders, a one-day shoot, a small crew.”

  “Huh.” Gil took a long slurp of coffee and thought for a minute. “Pearce is really wooing Leni. He wants to flatter her, show off. Before she even signs her fake name on the dotted line, he arranges a screen test, perhaps.” He was enjoying this. “The shoot wasn’t that big—a few trusted crew. Maybe in Palm Springs, away from scrutiny and the gossip of Hollywood.”

  “No one with links to the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League,” said Clara. “It’s possible the crew wouldn’t even know who she was if they weren’t following the boycott.”

  Gil nodded. “Right, she’s a decent-looking broad with a foreign accent.”

  “Also the desert in Palm Springs could fill in for Tripoli or Greece or wherever Leni had originally planned to shoot on location,” said Clara, putting it together in that moment.

  “ ‘Forget filming in Europe or North Africa. Look what we can do for you here in California—desert, oceans, mountains, perfect weather,’ ” Gil said, imagining Pearce’s pitch. “Leni Riefenstahl’s Hollywood debut.” He let out a low whistle. “What do you know? The real ‘Silver Blonde’ is a redhead, Pearce’s titian-haired Nazi film queen.”

  Clara leaned forward. “Hushing up a camera test is one thing. What I want to know is, how could Pearce take the gamble of signing her? How could he even consider it?” She flashed a glance around the restaurant, then lowered her voice. “The other studios boycotted Riefenstahl when she was just here on vacation. Surely her new film would be box office poison.”

  Gil leaned back in the booth and thought about that for a beat. “Sure, in that moment it doesn’t look smart. But Pearce takes the long view. Think of it without the benefit of hindsight. Early 1939, and many American business leaders think Mr. Hitler’s on the level. Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Charles Lindbergh—all big fans. The America First Committee and Lindbergh’s nonintervention gang are gaining popularity in Washington. Their goal was to keep America out of the war. And at this point it looks like they’re succeeding—there’s no way the US will get mixed up in another European conflict. Pearce assumes the political flap over Kristallnacht will blow over. Maybe his interest in Leni goes beyond her creative talents.”

  “What do you mean?” said Clara. “The love angle?”

  Gil shook his head. “No. Ideology. There are those who’d prefer that our movie industry weren’t quite so ‘European’—code for ‘Jewish.’ Leni would be the kind of European they could get behind—auburn-haired and Aryan. I’d say signing Leni wasn’t just a creative choice. It was an ideological one as well—the kind of decision Kenneth Pearce and others might have encouraged. I found out that Pops Pearce met Mr. Hitler in ’36 at the Olympics, and he was quite a fan of Nazi ideas.”

  Clara shook her head. “Because of the war, I always thought of America as the good guys. I can’t believe there would be Americans who would support Hitler.”

  Gil shrugged. “You don’t need to love Hitler to be anti-Semitic. Take Roger Brackett. He thinks I’m French-Canadian—my last name is ‘Gilbert.’ ” Gil said it the French way, “Jeel-berr.”

  “I grew up on the border of New York State and Quebec,” Gil continued. “And sure, my dad is French-Canadian, but my mother’s Jewish—which Brackett doesn’t know. My first week on the job, he said something like ‘The Jews have all the jobs in Hollywood.’ Just a throwaway line. Another time, we’re out for lunch and he talks about me being stingy on a tip: ‘Don’t be such a Jew about the tip, Gil.’ Whatever. It’s just an expression, right?” Gil raised an eyebrow like he didn’t buy it for a second. “You see, Roger’s a perfect example of the thoughtless garden-variety anti-Semitism in this town. I don’t think Brackett’s some Nazi-loving fascist. I doubt he was a member of the German-American Bund or the Silver Shirts. It’s run-of-the-mill bigotry that comes as naturally to him as breathing.”

  The waitress arrived with their lunch, and their theories took a break while they ate. Clara mulled the whole thing over.

  “Where’s Connie in all of this?” asked Gil, offering Clara some fries.

  Clara pointed to the bottom of the contract. “Look at the witness.”

  Gil took the contract and squinted at the signature. “C. Milligan. And it’s signed in Palm Springs.” His eyes met Clara’s.

  “Connie probably typed up the contract.”

  Gil laid down the paper lightly as if it would disintegrate.

  After they had polished off lunch and the waitress had cleared their plates, they picked up the story again. “After Pearce signs Leni,” said Gil, “she returns to Europe in January 1939, maybe to work on the script or whatever. A production like that would take months to prep. But then in 1939, Germany invades Poland, and Britain declares war on Germany.”

  “With Europe at war,” said Clara, “the project is probably put off or on hold. Maybe Pearce is starting to get cold feet; his prediction that the politics surrounding Leni will blow over is way off course.”

  Gil nodded. “By the time Pearl Harbor strikes, it’s ‘sayonara’ to Leni’s Hollywood career—finished before it even began.” He shrugged. “Pearce moves on—win some, lose some. During the war he looks like a patriot—the studio churns out uplifting movies, his contract stars entertain the troops. It was one business idea that didn’t pan out.”

  “Not to mention that his father must have made a packet out of the war—auto parts for the US army,” added Clara.

  Gil leaned back in the booth with his coffee. “His Nazi flag-waving was an inconvenient blip and Pearce’s collaboration with Leni was never made public.”

  “Until,” said Clara, “Connie showed up in LA.”

  “What I don’t get is the timing.” Gil shook his head slightly. “Why did Connie wait until now to blackmail Pearce? She’d known about this whole thing since ’38. Why not recall all this during the war? Why did it take this article in the Evening Post? Couldn’t Connie have put two and two together sooner?”

  “I don’t think she had the full picture in ’38,” said Clara. “She wouldn’t have known who Leni was, and didn’t care about European politics. They were glamorous Hollywood folk, and she was probably thinking she was lucky to have a job right out of school. After Palm Springs, she pr
obably forgets about the ‘German actress.’ ”

  Gil chewed it over. “Yeah, I buy that.”

  Clara leaned forward in the flow of her theory. “Reading the article in the Evening Post gave her the context—that Leni wasn’t just a foreign actress, that she was close to Hitler, that she had directed Triumph of the Will. Connie was hit with this right around the anniversary of V-E Day—that timing is significant.”

  Gil nodded. “She felt raw; she was missing Jim.”

  “Exactly,” said Clara.

  “Sure. I mean, it sticks in my craw, to be honest—rich powerful Americans, playing for the wrong side, hobnobbing with Hitler and his favorite Fräulein. The world’s rich and privileged scratching each other’s backs. Chumps like me fighting on the beach for their freedom, and those fellows making out like bandits because of the war.”

  The waitress refilled Gil’s coffee.

  “All right,” he said. “We have the thing that Connie had over Pearce. If it came out about Pearce’s signing Leni, it would be disastrous for the studio. It’s the missing piece—a strong motive for blackmail. What’s our next move?”

  “Proof,” Clara replied. “Can you check the story department? See if there’s anything on Penthesilea or Amazon Queen?”

  Gil nodded. “What else do we have—the contract?”

  “But it’s not in Leni’s name.” Clara shook her head. “It’s her pseudonym: Richter.”

  Gil sighed. “Right, it doesn’t prove much on its own.”

  Clara pushed away her coffee. It tasted bitter. “Wait.” She looked up. “The camera test for Amazon Queen. What if Connie was looking for it? That’s why she was in the vaults.”

  “I thought she had a date. That’s why she got dolled up and Bannon gave her an outfit.”

  “That’s what Connie told Bannon, so she could use Bannon’s dressing room—the vaults are within spitting distance.” Clara’s brain began to connect the dots. “The date thing was just an excuse. Bannon’s dressing room has a clear view of the road. Connie could have waited until security did their rounds, and moments later she was inside. Her plan that night was to get inside the vaults, to find Amazon Queen. What if she was already in the vaults looking for the reel when the killer surprised her?”