Stardust (The Starlight Trilogy #3) (31 page)

Magic and intrigue were missing in public figures and films today. Now society wanted scandals and exposed truths. Why would people want to take away the one piece of innocence they could always rely upon in trying times, those that brought them so much joy and awe in their youth—the idyllic paradises shown in motion pictures? Why did they now want violence, corruption, and deceit in films when it existed so prevalently in real life?

Then again, perhaps the perfect public images created by the Starlight Studios system contributed to actors like Marilyn Monroe succumbing to the perils of alcohol and substance abuse. Many performers upheld their façades when all they wanted was to reveal their true selves and have people love them for who they really were.

Beth was fortunate. Under contract, she was able to remain true to herself because it coincided with Mr. Mertz’s plan for her as
his star.
If she had been made to adhere to an image that was unlike her real personality, maybe she would’ve met the same fate as many of her colleagues. Maybe then she’d have a different opinion on the matter entirely. Either way, they could not go back. As a society, they had seen too many truths—they knew too much—and the pubic still craved more.

And now Beth was days away from the release of her autobiography, about to provide intimate—albeit limited—details of her personal and professional lives to strangers. The irony was not lost on her.

While Beth and Aidan continued to live in New York City, they kept in touch with their friends from Hollywood. Directors Preston Adams and Alistair Graves retired after long, successful careers and were still living in L.A. Elia Kazan lived in Manhattan with his third wife, Frances, whom he married in 1982. Molly Kazan died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-six from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1968, and Barbara, his second wife, passed away from breast cancer in 1980. Mr. Kazan retired from directing in the late 1970s and now spent his days writing. He also considered penning his autobiography. Beth offered encouragement on the subject, given her own positive experience.

Jack Peters and Ryan Sawyer were no longer a couple. In the late 1950s, Ryan was encouraged to marry his agent’s secretary, much like Rock Hudson’s façade, to strengthen his manly image. The engagement was arranged after a rumor about Jack and Ryan began floating around the industry. Ryan panicked and ended their relationship immediately, scared of what would happen to his career if the truth were confirmed. The secretary, Laura, divorced him after three years of marriage. Beth last heard that Ryan had purchased a ranch in North Dakota, where he now spent his days alone, tending to his horses.

Jack left the film industry in the late 1970s after his newly diagnosed arthritis made it difficult for him to dance. His breakup with Ryan had devastated him, but fortunately, he met and fell in love with another man, Jonathan, with whom he currently shared a home in Santa Barbara.

Beth’s former costar, William Everett, married four times and fathered two children, both of whom were not conceived with his wives. His popularity dipped in the 1960s and 1970s, but given his persistence and his penchant to take any acting gig offered to him, he always managed to stay in the limelight.

Luck struck in 1982 when Will landed the lead in a new series,
Mason
, launched on a major television network. With his deeply tanned skin, polished veneers, toupee, and newly lifted face, he was now the highest paid actor on the small screen.
Mason
featured a wealthy Los Angeles private detective named Chase Mason, who lived a glamorous life, wore flashy gold jewelry, and managed to catch all the bad guys by the end of every hour-long episode without creasing his silk suit, scuffing his shiny dress shoes, or having one lock of hair fall out of place. Each episode ended the same way, with Detective Mason celebrating his victory amongst a bevy of scantily clad beauties at his beach house and drinking champagne.

Beth had seen Will many times over the years. He still lived in Beverly Hills, and as usual, always had some younger busty pinup on his arm. Although the world had seen many shifts over time, some things never changed. She was glad he was doing so well.

Wade Henley achieved moderate success following his role as Sal in
Golden Gloves
, but a few years later, he decided to leave the movie industry to pursue a career in real estate. He currently operated out of a beachside office in Malibu. He was the father of three boys and married to a cosmetician he met on the set of his final film.

Beth’s childhood friend from Clarkson, Emma Russell, was still happily married to Neil. When Neil’s father passed away unexpectedly in 1956, Neil took over the family’s furniture business and expanded the company into a popular local chain. He established new headquarters in Portland, where they resided presently. Despite their initial difficulties, Emma and Neil became parents to two beautiful girls, Teresa and Heather, both of whom became teachers like their mother. Beth corresponded with Emma through monthly letters, and they saw each other once a year.

Luther Jensen Mertz died of a heart attack in 1971 while his wife tended to their backyard garden. Mrs. Mertz found her husband sprawled out in his favorite leather chair in their living room with a glass of scotch on the table next to him and his pipe on the floor, burning a hole in their expensive Turkish rug.

The obituaries called Mr. Mertz a movie mogul and pioneer, and that was by all means true. An impoverished Polish-Jewish immigrant, he arrived in America in the 1910s and managed to create a successful motion picture studio from nothing and make thousands of films now considered classics. Given that Beth chose to omit why she despised him in her memoir, she had no choice but to accept the public’s high opinion of him. But she would never forget the man he truly was behind closed doors: a callous, corrupt tyrant.

Sam pulled up in front of Beth’s apartment building near the intersection of Central Park West and West Seventy-Second Street and opened her door. After bidding him farewell, she entered the building. Beth and Aidan had lived in the same apartment since the summer of 1954 and had never considered selling. Nowhere else would feel like home.

When Beth exited the elevator on the top floor, a familiar melody greeted her in the corridor. She blushed like a young woman on her first date as she entered the apartment and hung her coat in the foyer closet. Humming along with the song Aidan wrote for her years ago, she traveled to the parlor but stopped just outside the door. He played so beautifully she didn’t want to interrupt him.

She took a detour into the library and approached the fireplace mantel to admire her favorite photograph from their wedding on April sixteenth, 1955. The ceremony was a quaint gathering in Manhattan, with only their dearest friends and her parents present. Beth wore a lace gown, designed by Olivia, while Aidan wore a black tuxedo. She’d never forget his tears as she joined him at the altar and they exchanged custom-made rings and personalized vows. It was one of the greatest moments of her life.

Another photograph showed Beth dancing with her father during the reception. Her parents still lived in Clarkson and were in optimal health. She visited them regularly and they often visited her as well.

The photograph from Beth’s first date with Aidan was next on the mantel. She brushed her fingertips to the glass. Memories of their time at the Bethesda Fountain and the Waldorf Astoria mingled with the notes Aidan played in the parlor.

There was also a photograph of Aidan’s mother, Catherine Evans. Encompassed by an antique gold frame and protected by glass, Catherine looked like a movie star posing for a professional portrait with her broad smile and eyes full of both tenderness and mystery. She reminded Beth so much of Aidan.

Aidan never resolved his feud with his father. After Graham Evans’ death in 1974, his widow, Betty, sorted through his belongings and discovered this photograph of Catherine and others of Catherine and Aidan together locked in his office desk. She mailed them to Aidan right away. At that time, Aidan hadn’t seen his mother’s face in over three decades. When he received the photographs, he wept, but he also seemed at peace.

Presently, Betty lived in Sarasota, Florida. Since his father’s death, Aidan wrote her every month, and in each correspondence, he included a check. Betty never cashed them, but he continued to send them anyway. The money was Aidan’s attempt to make up for his inability to provide her with the stepmother/stepson relationship she wanted and deserved. Although he liked Betty and had forgiven her for the affair, she was connected to a negative time in his life that he didn’t want to revisit.

As Aidan ushered the song into the third verse, Beth walked to the oak hunch embedded in the wall, surrounded by books. She admired the music box Aidan gave her for her nineteenth birthday at the end of their first date in New York. There was also a collection of photographs of their children taken over the years.

Hannah Catherine Evans was born February seventh, 1959, and Nicholas John Evans arrived on March fifteenth, 1962. Neither Hannah nor Nicholas ever showed an interest in acting as a profession. Beth and Aidan never pushed them either way, preferring them to explore all types of hobbies while growing up and follow their own paths.

Like her father, Hannah had high cheekbones and green eyes so vibrant she was often asked if she wore contacts, while her full lips, narrow nose, and dark brown hair resembled her mother’s features. Poetry, painting, and music were her passions. She had learned piano from Aidan and had also taken up the violin and flute in her youth. Currently, she worked as a music teacher at an all-girls private school uptown.

While Hannah was an extrovert who poured her energy into the arts, Nicholas was far more reserved and had an interest in technical knowledge and mathematics. He took guitar lessons during his Joe Strummer phase in the late 1970s but never stuck with it. Like Beth, he wasn’t musically inclined.

During his teenage years, Nicholas exhibited a lot of his father’s rebellious tendencies, including talking back to his teachers and a penchant for fast driving. When it became clear that Nicholas could not be deterred from racing altogether, Aidan enrolled him in professional lessons to allow him to hone his skills safely and limit his daredevil driving to the racetrack.

Thankfully, in his senior year of high school, Nicholas settled down and got serious about his studies, though he and Aidan still raced each other for fun at a track outside the city. Twenty-three years old now, he lived in an apartment near Union Square and studied architecture at New York University.

Beth took only five months off work after each child was born. She loved her family, but being a stay-at-home mother and housewife didn’t appeal to her. It was the reason she had left Clarkson to begin with. Instead, she strived for the best of both the personal and professional worlds. Typically, when Hannah and Nicholas were younger, she and Aidan accepted jobs away from home only if they could take the children with them. When the children were in school, this meant during summer breaks. When that wasn’t possible, one of them stayed home while the other filmed on location.

Hannah and Nicholas were well traveled and had attended the finest schools in Manhattan, but through their charity work and constant reminders of their family’s humble roots, they didn’t act superior or entitled because of their parents’ fame. In fact, Beth and Aidan were often told how grounded their children were. It was one of the greatest compliments they could’ve received.

Six Academy Awards sat on the hutch’s middle shelf. Two of the statuettes were from Beth and Aidan’s Best
Actress and Best Actor wins for
Sparkling Meadow
and
Spike Rollins
,
respectively. The next two were top honors for their work in
Golden Gloves,
which continued a successful run in theaters for weeks after its release and earned Elia Kazan an Oscar for Best Director. Then there was Aidan’s Best Director Oscar for his 1976 third directorial effort,
Frayed
, for which he also wrote the screenplay, and finally, Beth’s third Best Actress Oscar for her role in that same film.

Over the years, Aidan had been both in front of the camera and behind. It was his desire to return to his theatrical stage roots that encouraged Beth to work with him on Broadway. They costarred in several productions over the years and were even each nominated for a Tony Award.

Beth and Aidan were active members of the Actors Studio until 1964, when Aidan came to her with an idea to start an organization to help ill children. They talked it over in earnest and then left the Actors Studio to focus on bringing his dream to fruition.

By that time, the Actors Studio wasn’t the same anyway. Elia Kazan had left, and under the sole rule of Lee Strasberg, the organization became more about celebrity than talent alone, superseding its original philosophy and making it an ideal time for Beth and Aidan to resign. However, they still applied the knowledge they’d gained as Actors Studio members to every one of their acting projects.

One of Beth and Aidan’s proudest moments occurred in July 1965 when they attended the grand opening of the first Golden Warriors Camp For Children, named after Aidan’s role in
Golden Gloves,
the film where his character beat the odds and triumphed, despite his hardships. The Golden Warriors Association, also known as GWA, was a non-profit organization that served children and their families coping with cancer. Its mission was to ensure that kids didn’t have to compromise on their childhoods because of a serious illness.

Over the last twenty years, GWA had grown substantially, thanks to contributions from individuals and corporations. Presently, Beth and Aidan were fortunate to receive support from more than one thousand annual donors. They donated much of their own income as well and continued to play an active role in its operation.

In the beginning, GWA consisted of a single camp in Ashford, Connecticut. Today, the organization oversaw twelve full member camps in eight states, six new camps in various stages of development, and five global partnership initiatives in Africa and Asia. At camp, children enjoyed horseback riding, boating, swimming, fishing, arts and crafts, sports, music instruction, and acting instruction, which included participation in an end-of-summer play.