American Blonde (38 page)

“MURDER AND MOVIE STARS AND A TALE OF TWO SISTERS:

A Cover-up in Hollywood”

by Samuel C. Weldon

The Hollywood Reporter

The Los Angeles newspapers have been filled lately with news of what some are calling the Lone Women Murders. These women were not well-known or famous, but hundreds of people are being rounded up and interviewed as part of ongoing investigations into the deaths, and hundreds of others are coming forward each week to confess to the crimes.

A girl named Eloise Mudge died December 28, 1946, but no one is talking about her.

Why should anyone care about Eloise Mudge? Because Eloise Mudge was also known as Barbara Fanning, one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s most popular stars.

There now. I’ve got your attention. After all, we love to read about movie stars, especially when they are very famous, and especially when there’s even a hint of scandal involved.

But Barbara Fanning was just another actress. I’m more interested in the girl she was off camera.

Here’s why: Eloise was the girl behind the famous face. She was an ordinary girl who grew up in Carmen, Oklahoma, in an orphans’ home, left there by her mother when she was three. Her sister, Edna, was just a baby at the time, and the two girls were dragged in and out of that home until Eloise was old enough to leave for good, on her own. It was Hollywood that got her out of there: specifically, a chance to test for MGM.

The movies were never her dream. Stardom was what younger sister Edna longed for. Instead, Eloise looked ahead to marriage and children and family. She wanted a house of her own, somewhere to call home.

But Hollywood came calling before any of those things, and she discovered she was a natural on camera. After all, hadn’t she been playing a role all her life? The dutiful orphan and protective older sister.

Her death is well-known, but the circumstances are not. No one cared much about Eloise Mudge, orphan girl, but everyone cared about Barbara Fanning, movie star. The men of Metro cared most of all. The death of Eloise Mudge would never have caused headlines, but the death of Barbara Fanning was worrisome business from the start. First, there was the location of the death: Broad Water, the estate of MGM producer Billy Taub and his wife, actress Ophelia Lloyd. Second, there was the potential scandal of it all. It was clear to those at the scene that night that Barbara Fanning did not die accidentally, which meant the unthinkable: Someone from the studio had murdered her.

This would never do. Particularly if that someone was another Metro star, an even bigger star—the biggest star of all. I’m talking, of course, of Nigel Gray, famous for his charm and good looks and devastating British accent, as well as, most recently, his romancing of Miss Fanning in spite of his marriage to the late Pia Palmer.

Metro, so famously run under Papa Louis B. Mayer like a very large, very affluent family, clearly believed that one of its own was guilty. And so it set out to protect him. Fortunately, there is just such a team in place for just such an occasion. I am talking about Howard Strickling, Eddie Mannix, and Whitey Hendry. These are the Fixers, folks. Every studio has them—those men who rush to the scene of a brawl or a drunken binge or any site where scandal might be brewing around their stars. But no Fixers are as powerful as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s.

Their main missive is to protect the image of the studio. Even if you have to call a murder an “accident,” plant wiretaps and snitches and spies at every restaurant, doctor’s office, or drugstore in town, use scare tactics and henchmen to keep your employees under control, round up innocent people to direct the spotlight elsewhere, deliver threats, blackmail, pass out suspensions, etc. In short, you do what it takes, and if anyone gets in the way of that, you take care of it.

Johnny Clay Hart, brother of Metro star Kit Rogers, a longtime friend of Eloise Mudge, recently witnessed this firsthand when he was brought in for questioning in the case of murder victim Jeanne French. Hart never knew French, never even met the woman, and was nowhere near the West Los Angeles murder site the night French was killed. But Kit Rogers had been poking around just a little too much about who might have killed her friend, and so her brother was implicated.

Nigel Gray did not kill Barbara Fanning. In trying to protect him, the studio pronounced him guilty.

Babe King killed Barbara Fanning. At first glance, the motive might seem clear: professional jealousy. The younger actress offs the older one for a chance at her place in the spotlight, at the same roles, the same dressing room, perhaps even the same man.

But this is a story about two sisters.

Babe King’s real name was Edna Mudge. There was only one person who knew Edna’s secrets—secrets she was determined to keep. That person was her sister, Eloise. Eloise, dutiful orphan and protective older sister, knew too much. And so she had to go.

Never mind the ruined lives and orphaned child Edna left behind. After all, she had found a home at MGM. When she killed once, they protected her. When she tried to kill again—her victims this time: Nigel Gray and Kit Rogers—she ended up killing herself.

But was Edna Mudge the only murderer here?

O
n March 13, five thousand fans waited outside the Shrine Auditorium downtown. A dozen or more searchlights panned the sky. A radio reporter was set up near the entrance, broadcasting live. He had to shout over the noise from the crowd, the sound of applause as more stars arrived, of music swelling out and around us from inside the auditorium. “I’ve been covering the awards since 1929, and I can honestly say this is the most glamorous ceremony of all. The war is over. The ermine and sequins are out. We’ve been deprived for so long that we are making up for lost time.”

Inside, I took in the view—the stars laughing and talking to each other. There was Gable. There was Hepburn. There was Errol Flynn. Lana Turner. Tyrone Power. Every star in the galaxy gathered under one roof. Looking at them, in their diamonds and black ties, it was hard to believe anything terrible or tragic could ever happen. Even if the sun didn’t shine here every day, it wouldn’t matter. They would just paint the skies blue.

Jack Benny was our host, entertaining the crowd with his usual patter. The cast of
Home of the Brave
sat together. Johnny Clay was my date. My gown was blue, in honor of Mudge. I wore her Rebekah ring on my right hand.

Billy Taub and Ophelia Lloyd sat on the end of the row in front, Felix Roland and Shelby Jordan to their right. The rest of us fell in around them—Webster Hayes, Hal, Collie, Rosie, Redd Deeley, Phillip Drake, and Nigel, wearing a sky blue tie that matched his eyes.

“You’re all here,” the usher had said as he led us to the seats.

He meant, you’re all sitting here, but I thought, Not all of us.

“Pipes.”

“Sam.”

Johnny Clay and I stood as he moved past us, followed by an ice-cream blonde in a tight white dress. He took the seat next to mine, while she arranged herself on the other side of him.

He smiled at me and I smiled back at him. “You had us worried. But you’re fine.” I heard the question in it.

“I’m fine. I read the article. It was terrific. It was just what needed to be said.”

“I wanted to show it to you first, but I thought it was a good idea to get it out before the studio could go to work at burying everything.”

“I’m surprised they even let you in here.”

“That’s the beauty of being a free agent. They can’t do a goddamn thing except to make sure they don’t hire me again. They tried to fire me from
Latimer
, but Tauby threatened to walk off.”

“So he still has a spine.”

“At least partially.”

“Will you stay?”

“Only till I finish the job. I don’t like to leave things undone once I’ve started them.” He gave me a pointed look before glancing down at the armrest between us, at my hand dangling off. He reached for it, interlacing his fingers with mine. “You won’t believe this, but I miss holding hands with you.”

On the other side of him, the blonde was watching us.

I said, “She’s pretty.”

“Yes, and ordinary and not you.”

Suddenly, everyone around me broke into applause, and Collie went walking up on stage to accept the award for costume design. Sam and I let go at the same time as we began to clap, and continued clapping as Rosie won for the score, Webster Hayes won for Best Actor, Sam for Best Writing, and Felix Roland for Best Director. Soon, there were only two awards remaining: Best Actress and Best Picture.

Ray Milland presented the actress award. As he announced the nominees—Jennifer Jones, Rosalind Russell, Jane Wyman, Ophelia Lloyd, and Barbara Fanning—I pinched my brother’s arm. “And the Oscar goes to . . .” Ray Milland paused before reading the winner. He looked down at the card and then up at the audience and said simply, “Barbara Fanning.”

The applause erupted at once. I stood, Sam stood, Johnny Clay stood. In seconds, every person in the auditorium was standing and clapping and cheering until I thought I might go deaf from the sound. Then Nigel Gray walked up onto the stage, and Ray Milland handed him the award.

Nigel stood waiting for the sound to die down, blinking into the lights, into the audience, glittering and beautiful. It seemed as if the applause would go on forever, and there he would be, frozen in place, unable to walk away. He looked out at us with his blue eyes, and it hit me then that maybe the reason Mudge had loved blue wasn’t because of the sky at all, but because it made her think of Nigel and of what she saw when she looked at him—the promise of a future, of love, of family, of home.

When we finally quieted, little by little, and sat, row by row, Nigel shook his head and smiled. He wiped his eyes and leaned in to the microphone. “I’m honored to accept this most deserved award for a most deserving woman.” He stared down at the Oscar. “I was lucky enough to know Eloise Mudge, even if I didn’t know her long enough. She would have been so bloody proud of this.” His voice broke and he kissed the award before raising it into the air above him. “‘All my heart is yours: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.’”

Jane Eyre.
Nigel had read it too. The thought of the two of them sharing something so small made me feel at once sadder and happier. I told myself to focus on the happier. It was good to know that Mudge had, for a time at least, found what she was looking for.

I met with Mr. Mayer at ten thirty the next morning. I thanked him for everything he’d done for me and told him he had been like a father, which was something I appreciated, more than he knew, since my own had left long ago.

“I’ll never forget you or MGM for all you did for me. But I want to make my own choices. I want to sing my songs and have the public like me for me. I don’t want to be Kit Rogers anymore. Of all the things I’ve learned here, that’s the most important one—never let anyone tell you who you are.”

“If this is about more money—”

“It’s not.”

For a long time, he held his head in his hands. I waited for one of his legendary fits to begin—for him to kick the desk and start to cry, to fall on the floor and foam at the mouth, to faint dead away. I didn’t say anything. I sat with my hands folded, waiting.

Finally he looked up, and his face was hard to read. He said, “It’s not the same business it was when we met, Velva Jean Hart. I won’t stop you. I’ll just wish you luck.” I thought he seemed tired.

He stood. I stood.

He walked around his desk on the little platform, and then stepped onto the carpet so that he was beside me, standing at his actual height, which meant I had to look down. I thought, For all his power, he’s just a short little man behind a desk.

In my dressing room, as one of the secretaries ticked off her list, I pulled the framed Opry picture off the wall and a few other things I’d left—books, one of Mudge’s alarm clocks, a vase she’d given me. Everything else belonged to MGM. I said, “Come in,” to the knock on the door.

Bernie walked in, something in his hand. He said, “I came to see if you needed any help.” He glanced at the secretary, who went on making marks on her clipboard.

“This is it.” I waved at the small pile of things. “It seems like there should be more.”

“Well. That’s it, then.”

“That’s it.”

He handed me a stack of letters. “These are yours.”

“What are they?”

“Something you should have had a long time ago.”

On my way to the car, I stopped in at the music department to say good-bye to Rosie. When I walked into his studio, a girl was singing and playing the guitar, no more than eighteen or nineteen years old, pretty, sweet face, fresh off the farm or the mountains. I stood watching her, watching me when I’d first come to Metro, maybe me when I’d first gone to Nashville. Her voice was raw and pure and big. The way she played and sang, you could see and hear how much she loved it.

When she was finished, Rosie looked up and saw me and the box I was carrying. “Going somewhere, kid?”

“Yes, and before I do, I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for me.”

“So you really are going somewhere, then.”

“Yes. And I’ll never forget you.”

He began clearing his throat and cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. I pretended not to notice how wet his eyes were or the single tear that had escaped one corner. He said, “I want you to remember, after all you’ve learned—just sing. At the end of the day, it’s not about diaphragms and technique. It’s about you and that remarkable voice.”

I hugged him, and he coughed and cleared his throat and set to cleaning his glasses again.

The girl whispered something to him, too low for me to hear, and he said, “Kit, I want you to meet our newest discovery. Briana Harley, Kit Rogers.”

“Actually, it’s Velva Jean Hart,” I said, and shook her hand.

“Miss Hart . . .”

“Velva Jean.”

“Velva Jean, I’m such a fan. I can’t believe I’m meeting you.” She laughed. “And I can’t believe I’m telling you I can’t believe it. You’re what inspired me to leave home and come here.”

I said, “You have a gift.” Not just the voice, I thought, but the spirit, bold and all her own. “You’re in good hands here.” I looked at Rosie. “But I’ll tell you one of the best pieces of advice anyone ever gave me: Remember who you are, hold on to that, and whatever you do, don’t let them change you.”

When I got back to Mudge’s house—Flora’s house now—I remembered the letters Bernie had given me. There were ten of them addressed to Miss Velva Jean Hart, a.k.a. Kit Rogers, c/o MGM Studios, Culver City, California. There was no return address.

I opened them in the order of the postmarks. One after another, months apart, spread out over the past two years, always with a different address, a different postmark. The first was dated December 7, 1945. The last one was dated February 19, 1947, from Lindytown, West Virginia.

Deer Velva Jean, I don’t know that this letter will get thru, but I wanted to rite to tell you how prowd I am of you. I ain’t been mutch to cownt on in the past, and I know I can’t take any credut for what I see on that screen, but I shure am prowd jest the same. I can’t beleeve that you have all that in you. You are the purtiest gurl in the world and I ain’t just saying that cuz I’m your daddy. The only gurl I ever seen purtier was your mama. I hope they’re taking good care of you in Hollywood. You got every rite to forget me, but I hope you won’t. I want yoo to know that it don’t matter what name you call yerself—you’ll always be my dawter. Luv, Lincoln S. Hart.