My Story (7 page)

And around us were the wolves. Not the big wolves inside the studio gates, but the little ones—talent agents without offices, press agents without clients, contact men without contacts, and managers. The drugstores and cheap cafés were full of managers ready to put you over if you enrolled under their banner. Their banner was usually a bed sheet.

I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes—an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.

Among the phonies and failures were also a set of has-beens. These were mostly actors and actresses who had been dropped by the movies—nobody knew why, least of all themselves. They had played “big parts.” They had scrapbooks full of “stills” and write-ups. And they were full of anecdotes about the big bosses with the magic names who ran the studios—Goldwyn, Zanuck, Mayer, Selznick, Schenck, Warner, Cohn. They had rubbed shoulders with them and exchanged conversations with them. Sitting in the cheap café nursing a glass of beer for an hour, they talked about the great ones, calling them by their first names. “Sam said to me,” and “I told L.B.,” and “I'll never forget Darryl's excitement when he saw the rushes.”

When I remember this desperate, lie-telling, dime-hunting Hollywood I knew only a few years ago I get a little homesick. It was a more human place than the paradise I dreamed of and found. The people in it, the phonies and failures, were more colorful than the great men and successful artists I was to know soon.

Even the crooks who threw me curves and set traps for me seem pleasant, mellow characters. There was Harry, the photographer, who kept photographing me when he had enough money to buy plates for his view camera.

“I know a real hot agent,” said Harry, “who's crazy about you. He saw one of your stills and blew his top. And he's no alley runner. He used to be a big man in Budapest.”

“What kind of a big man, Harry?”

“A producer. You've heard of Reinhardt?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, he was next in line to Reinhardt,” said Harry. “You'll like him. He thinks big.”

The three of us sat in a cheap café the next evening. The proprietor knew better than to send the waiter over to see if we wanted anything. Harry and I had been there before. The third at our table, Mr. Lazlo, didn't look any more promising as a customer. Mr. Lazlo was fat, unshaved, bald-headed, bleary-eyed, and his shirt collar was a little frayed. But he was a fine conversationalist. He spoke with a fascinating accent. It was hard to imagine that so cultured a man could be a bum. But I knew he was, or what would he be doing with Harry and me?

“So you have ambition to be a great actress,” said Mr. Lazlo.

I nodded.

“Wonderful,” said Mr. Lazlo. “How would you like not only to be a big star but also to own your own movie studio and make only the finest movies. No Hollywood junk. But art—real art.”

“I'd like that,” I said.

“Good,” said Mr. Lazlo. “Now I know where you stand.”

“Wait till you hear his ideas,” said Harry. “I told you he thinks big.”

“In Budapest,” said Mr. Lazlo, “if I wanted a few hundred thousand dollars I have only to telephone the bank, and they send over a wagon with the money.” He patted my hand. “You are very beautiful. I would like to buy you the kind of dinner I used to have every night—in Budapest.”

“I've already eaten,” I said.

“You are lucky,” Mr. Lazlo sighed. “But first, before I go on—you are definitely interested in the project, may I ask?”

“I haven't heard it yet.”

“Are you willing to become a wife?” Mr. Lazlo asked.

“Whose?” I asked back.

“The wife of a millionaire,” said Mr. Lazlo. “He has authorized me to ask you this question.”

“Does he know me?”

“He has studied your photographs,” said Mr. Lazlo. “And he has picked you out from fifty other girls.”

“I didn't know I was in any contest,” I said.

“No cracks,” said Harry. “This is high finance.”

“The gentleman who wishes to marry you,” said Mr. Lazlo, “is seventy-one years of age. He has high blood pressure—and no living relatives. He is alone in the world.”

“He doesn't sound very enticing,” I said.

“My dear child,” Mr. Lazlo took my hand. His own was trembling with excitement. “You will inherit everything in six months. Maybe less.”

“You mean he'll die if I marry him?” I asked.

“I guarantee it,” said Mr. Lazlo.

“That's like murder,” I said to Harry.

“In six months you will be a widow with two million dollars,” said Mr. Lazlo. “You will keep the first million. Harry and I will split equally the second.”

I lay in bed unable to sleep that night. I would never marry or even see Mr. Lazlo's dying millionaire, but it was exciting to think about it. I went around for a week imagining myself living in a castle on a hill—with a swimming pool and a hundred bathing suits.

Mr. Lazlo was one of the nicer of the scheme peddlers I met. There were a dozen not nearly as nice. Of these Mr. Sylvester was one.

My phone rang in my room.

“This is John Sylvester speaking,” the voice said. “You don't know me but I'm a talent scout for Mr. Samuel Goldwyn.”

I managed to say, “How do you do.”

“We're looking for a girl of your general appearance,” said Mr. Sylvester, “for one of the parts in the new Goldwyn picture. It's not a big part, but a very important one.”

“Do you want to see me now?” I asked.

“Yes, I'll pick you up in a few minutes,” Mr. Sylvester said. “I'm in the vicinity. And we'll go over to the studio.”

“I'll be downstairs,” I said.

I stood in front of my house and shook with excitement. It had happened! I wouldn't fail! Once they let me inside nothing would ever get me out. An important part! In a Goldwyn picture! He made the best ones. And he made stars, too.

A car stopped, and a middle-aged man smiled at me.

“Hop in, Miss Dougherty,” he said.

I hopped in. We drove to the rear gate of the Goldwyn Studio.

“I always go in this way,” Mr. Sylvester said. “It's a short cut.”

It was seven o'clock and the place was deserted.

“We'll go to my office,” Mr. Sylvester said, steering me by the elbow. “I'll audition you there.”

We walked up a flight of steps, down a hallway. Mr. Sylvester stopped in front of a door.

“I hope they haven't locked me out,” he said. “No—still open.”

I noticed the name Dugan on the door and Mr. Sylvester said, patting my back, “Dugan and I share this office—for audition purposes.”

It was a well-furnished office. Mr. Sylvester told me to sit down on the couch.

“What do you want me to audition?” I asked.

Mr. Sylvester picked a script from the desk and handed it to me. It was the first movie script I had ever held in my hands.

“Which part do you wish me to read?” I asked. I could hardly get the words out of my mouth. I kept thinking, “Get hold of yourself. You're an actress. You mustn't let your face twitch.”

“Try one of the long speeches,” Mr. Sylvester said.

I looked up at him surprised. He seemed almost as excited as me. I opened the script and began to read.

“Would you please raise your dress a few inches,” Mr. Sylvester interrupted.

I lifted the hem above my knee and kept on reading.

“A little higher please,” said Mr. Sylvester.

I lifted the hem to my thighs without missing a word of the speech.

“I will always love you.” I read in the throbbing voice I used for “Hail To Thee, Blithe Spirit,” “No matter what becomes of me, Alfred.”

“A little higher,” Mr. Sylvester said again.

I thought that Mr. Sylvester was probably in a hurry and wanted to audition my figure and emotional talents at the same time. Still reciting from the script I pulled my dress up and uncovered my thighs. And suddenly Mr. Sylvester was on the couch. For a moment I was too sick at heart to move. I saw Mr. Sylvester plain. The whole thing was a fake. He didn't work for Goldwyn. It wasn't his office. He had pulled the audition gag in order to get me alone on a couch. I sat with my dress up and the treasured script in my hand while Mr. Sylvester started pawing me. Then I moved. I socked him in the eye, jumped up, kicked him, and banged my heel down on his toes—and ran out of the building.

For some time afterward Mr. Sylvester's words haunted me as if I had heard the true voice of Hollywood—“Higher, higher, higher.”

 

 

In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hair-do. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.

It wasn't because I had moral ideas. Nor because I saw what happened to girls who took money from men and let men support them as their sweeties. Nothing happened to such girls that wouldn't have happened to them anyway. Sometimes they got ditched and had to hook up with new lovers; or they got their names in the movie columns for being seen in the smart places, and this landed them jobs in the studios. Or, after going from love nest to love nest for a few years, they met someone who fell in love with them and got married and had children. A few of them even became famous.

It may be different in other places, but in Hollywood “being virtuous” is a juvenile sounding phrase like “having the mumps.”

Maybe it was the nickel Mr. Kimmel once gave me, or maybe it was the five dollars a week the orphanage used to sell me for, but men who tried to buy me with money made me sick. There were plenty of them. The mere fact that I turned down offers ran my price up.

I was young, blonde, and curvaceous, and I had learned to talk huskily like Marlene Dietrich and to walk a little wantonly and to bring emotion into my eyes when I wanted to. And though these achievements landed me no job they brought a lot of wolves whistling at my heels. They weren't just little wolves with big schemes and frayed cuffs. There were bona fide check signers, also.

I rode with them in their limousines and sat in swanky cafés with them, where I usually ate like a horse to make up for a week of skimpy drugstore counter meals.

And I went to the big Beverly Hills homes with them and sat by while they played gin or poker. I was never at ease in these homes or in the swanky cafés. For one thing my clothes became cheap and shabby looking in swell surroundings. I had to sit with my legs in such a position that the runs or the mends in my stockings wouldn't show. And I had to keep my elbows out of sight for the same reason.

The men like to show off to each other and to the kibitzers by gambling for high stakes. When I saw them hand hundred and even thousand dollar bills to each other, I felt something bitter in my heart. I remembered how much twenty-five cents and even nickels meant to the people I had known, how happy ten dollars would have made them, how a hundred dollars would have changed their whole lives.

When the men laughed and pocketed the thousands of dollars of winnings as if they were made of tissue paper, I remembered my Aunt Grace and me waiting in line at the Holmes Bakery to buy a sackful of stale bread for a quarter to live on a whole week. And I remembered how she had gone with one of her lenses missing from her glasses for three months because she couldn't afford the fifty cents to buy its replacement. I remembered all the sounds and smells of poverty, the fright in
people's eyes when they lost jobs, and the way they skimped and drudged in order to get through the week. And I saw the blue dress and white blouse walking the two miles to school again, rain or shine, because a nickel was too big a sum to raise for bus fare.