Get Happy (30 page)

Threats and warnings had not stopped her from marrying David, however, and this time around the studio’s naysayers showed uncharacteristic finesse; they were, indeed, almost diabolically subtle. Rather than trying to bludgeon her into submission, they aimed, by means of psychological warfare, to surreptitiously lead her to the conclusion they wanted her to draw: that Power was not her Prince Charming after all. Their primary weapon in this gamy plot was her studio publicist, Betty
Asher, who had previously used her persuasive arts on Lana Turner, helping to hold Turner together during her noisy breakup with Artie Shaw. Like many of those who worked in Howard Strickling’s wideranging publicity department, Asher was not actually a publicist, someone who represented a star to the press; she was instead a kind of lady-in-waiting, a hand-holder and a fixer, someone who did whatever it took to keep her client happy and productive. The “vice-president in charge of Mickey Rooney” was how Rooney described his own publicist, Les Peterson, and Judy could have said the same about Asher.

But Mickey was shrewd enough to realize that the affable Peterson was not a real friend, that he held, along with all his other titles, that of company spy: he reported every move Mickey made to his bosses in the Thalberg Building. Not for several years was Judy to realize that Asher was doing the same thing. “She gave a report to the studio office every week on the people I saw, what I ate, what time I came in at night and what time I got up in the morning,” Judy was later to say. “I can remember crying for days after I found out what she was doing to me.” But by then the damage had been done.

The daughter of a producer at Universal, Asher was as much a child of the motion-picture industry as Judy was. She had grown up in Beverly Hills, she had attended UCLA for three years and, until she was in her late teens, she had led the cushioned, protected life of Hollywood’s junior elite. All that ended abruptly with her father’s death. With no money and no one to help her—her alcoholic mother could scarcely take care of herself—she was obliged to live by her wits alone, which advised her to be hard, unscrupulous and loyal to no one. Even as she was telling Turner, who looked upon her as a close friend, how much better off she was without Artie Shaw, Asher was ringing Shaw’s doorbell and inviting herself inside. “The next thing I knew,” said Shaw, “we were in bed together.” It thus should have surprised no one that at Metro Asher’s lover was Eddie Mannix, one of Mayer’s chief subalterns and a man well placed to give a girl, especially an attractive, curly-haired blonde, a helpful boost up the corporate ladder.

Though Asher was just five years older, to Judy she seemed light-years ahead in experience and worldly wisdom. Her seeming sophistication, in fact, was probably one of the reasons she appealed to Judy, who doubtless hoped that some of that polish would rub off on her. With surprising speed Asher became not only her helper, but also her friend, mentor and emotional crutch. Judy depended on her more than anyone else, and there were times when no one, not even her old friend Roger Edens, could talk to her as soothingly and as effectively. Whenever Judy suffered an attack of nerves during filming, Asher would suddenly appear on the set, as mysteriously as a genie, to calm her down. On orders from Mayer himself—“Mr. Mayer wants them left alone,” Judy’s directors were told—no one was allowed to interrupt their conversations, and shooting could not resume until Asher had left.

Asher’s friendship with Judy was not confined to Culver City; during the time Judy was seeing Power, the two women went so far as to share quarters in Westwood. Almost inseparable, they were seen everywhere together, whispering and giggling like schoolgirls. A relationship so intense, so unusual and so conspicuous did not go unnoticed, particularly on a gossipy studio lot, and many at Metro suspected that Power was not Judy’s only lover in those days.

They may well have been right. Judy was not a lesbian. Nor was she a bisexual, equally attracted to both sexes. She was indeed drawn to men as iron is drawn to a magnet. Yet, despite that, she nevertheless enjoyed an occasional frolic with another woman, as did many other women in the permissive movie colony. That Judy and Asher both sometimes had sex with other women is indisputable; that they also had sex with each other is probable, if ultimately unprovable. They were as close as lovers, in any event, and Asher, to whom Judy told all and to whom she listened most intently, had been ideally cast to play the role of the double agent who would harden her heart against her beautiful Ty.

Love is supposed to bring happiness, but for Judy it brought not joy, but anxiety, confusion and long, sleepless nights. Much of her uneasiness was the product of her own impatience, and within mere weeks
of their first meeting she was demanding that Power ask Annabella for a divorce. Although his marriage had grown a little stale, Power was not ready to give it up, however, at least not so quickly, and some sympathy must be extended to a man who had not only sacrificed his extraordinary career to join the Marines, but who was now also being asked to give up just about everything else—his marriage, his home and his security.

And some sympathy must also be extended to Judy, who could not get him to say yes, and who could not get him to say no. Handicapped by a constitutional compulsion to please, Power was all but paralyzed at such crucial moments. “It was hard for Tyrone to face big issues,” acknowledged a regretful Watson Webb. Judy, who had fallen in love with his melting smile, did not see, or did not want to see, that his need to ingratiate himself was the obverse of his spectacular charm, that the two were bound together, one and indivisible. All Judy knew was that he refused to do what she wanted. Furious, she made what must have been a wrenching sacrifice, declining to see him when he came home from camp on weekend passes.

Perhaps never before had Judy been burdened by so much anxiety as she was in those early weeks of 1943. As if Power’s refusal to commit himself were not anguish enough, she was once again enduring the daily abuse of her old nemesis, Busby Berkeley, who had started work on
Girl Crazy
. His frantic pace, even more frenzied than usual, was pitilessly hard on his two stars, Judy and Mickey. Judy was, moreover, almost undone by the six-shooters popping around her during rehearsals for his elaborate rodeo scene, “just a wreck,” as one observer recalled, until Mickey put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “Honey, don’t worry,” he said. “It’s all right.”

But it was not all right. Fear and tension on the set, combined with a queasy concern about her affair with Power, had frayed her nerves beyond the breaking point, and Berkeley’s dismissal, three weeks into filming, came too late to prevent Judy’s collapse. Her weight dropped alarmingly, from a normal 110 pounds to ninety-four, and on January 29 she was confined to her bed for five days, warned by her doctor, sturdy old Marc Rabwin, that even after she returned to work, she should not do strenuous dance scenes for another six to eight weeks.

It was probably then, during those five days of convalescence, that Judy agreed to see Power again. Gazing into the warm and compassionate eyes that stared from his photograph near her bed, how could she have refused? Their romance resumed where it had left off, and Power, still in the grip of that old black magic, at last decided, on March 31, to grant her request and confront his wife. Over dinner at Perino’s, a restaurant often favored by the stars, he gave Annabella the bad news: “I’ve got to tell you—I’m in love with somebody else.” But Annabella, canny Frenchwoman that she was, already knew, in fact had known for months—not because of anything Power had done, but because of what he had not done. After reporting in October that he had met Judy, he never again mentioned her name. But from that moment Annabella had noticed his lack of ardor in the bedroom. It was obvious, she said, that Judy was the reason. Yet having gone so far as to bring their affair into the open, Power could not bring himself to take the next step: he was still unable or unwilling to ask Annabella for a divorce.

A few days after that tell-all dinner, Power was on a crowded troop train, headed east to Quantico, Virginia, the Marine Corps officers’ training school near Washington, D.C. As his train clattered slowly across the country, over the mountains and across the prairies, farther and farther away from Judy, he clutched her memory ever more tightly, and in a letter to Webb he made it clear how completely she had displaced Annabella in his affections. “I’m just the luckiest, happiest man alive today,” he wrote from Indianapolis. “God—sometimes I don’t think I can stand it. I do love her so.” A chance to show how much he loved her came perhaps sooner than he anticipated: not long after he had settled into his new barracks, he received some startling news—she was pregnant, Judy announced. She was carrying his baby, and if he did not marry her, she would be compelled to have an abortion.

Quick divorces were not easy to obtain in 1943. Even if Annabella had agreed to one, it would have been hard, perhaps impossible, for Power to have procured it in time to marry Judy before her condition became a scandal. Judy must have been aware of that, and there is reason to suspect that she invented the pregnancy to pressure him into
breaking with Annabella completely and irrevocably. But even as she was prodding him to say good-bye to Annabella, she herself, curiously enough, had neglected to file for divorce from David. Real or false, her pregnancy nonetheless pushed Power into a corner that he could not smile his way out of, and he finally asked Annabella for his freedom. His request was so tentative and polite, however, that Annabella had no trouble answering with a firm and authoritative no. Writing to Webb, Power himself confessed to a feeling of terrible depression. “I just can’t see ahead at all,” he said. “Everything seems so futile, and pointless.”

The story of Judy and Tyrone now moved swiftly toward its climax. At the end of May, Annabella traveled to Washington to talk to her husband face-to-face. Apparently assuming that her visit signaled a change of mind—a
oui
to divorce instead of a
non
—Power urged Judy, who had just finished
Girl Crazy
, to hurry east for a victory celebration in New York. As frightened of airplanes as she was of guns, Judy nonetheless jumped aboard a plane, making the long and punishing transcontinental flight—nineteen hours, with three stops for fuel in a dawdling DC-3.

She rushed only to wait, her happiness and her entire future resting, so she thought, on one favorable word from Annabella. If Power had shown some of the resolve of his swashbuckling screen characters—the dashing Zorro, for instance—he might yet have persuaded Annabella to make that word yes. Without a script, the actor who played those dashing roles could not stand up to so determined a woman, and even at that late date, with Judy poised nervously by a telephone in Manhattan, Power was all but tongue-tied. Whenever he brought up the subject of Judy, Annabella simply let the conversation die. No she had said, and no she continued to say
—tant pis!
Her spirits sinking with every hour, Judy lingered in New York until all hope had passed; then, feeling defeated, and probably deceived as well, she returned to Los Angeles. Power had let her down, and they both knew it. Their love affair was over, and a relationship that had begun with soaring hearts and flights of verse thus ended in resentment, recrimination and an undignified muddle.