All That Glitters (27 page)

“He’s full of shit,” Belinda snarled. “He wants to play daddy and see how his baby-bunting is. He doesn’t approve of interracial fucking—do you, Chazz?” She drawled out my name and the word hung in the air.

Mel was scowling, not at me, but at her. “What d’you want to talk like that for?” he said in a low, smooth voice. “Why d’you rag him that way if he’s your friend?”

“That’s right,” Angie put in. “We’re all friends here. Mel, got time for a drink?”

“Yes, I’ll have one, if it’s all the same.” He spoke politely, in a slightly southern-accented voice. His hands were on the table and I kept noticing their slender lines. A cigarette burned between two fingers and the smoke curled between us. The waiter brought another round. “Let me,” I said to Angie, who’d moved for the check.

“Oh, let him, damn it,” Belinda said. “That’s what men are meant for, picking up checks.”

“Put a lid on it, babe,” Mel said softly.

“Oh, go lid yourself,” she returned.

“I mean it, babe. Can it.”

“Well, fuck this, for Christ’s sake, can’t I even talk anymore?”

“Not like that. Not when you got friends come out to see you. Put a good face on it, babe. Eat your sandwich there.”

“Who’s hungry?” She swore contemptuously; then the ashes from her cigarette fell into her drink, and this triggered the most bizarre chain reaction. With one vicious swipe she sent the whole drink flying, and it splashed onto the nearest table, where two couples sat eavesdropping on our table. Without pausing, Belinda snatched up Mel’s drink and dashed it in his face, cubes and all. When she jumped up, he tried to pull her down again and she bit him. Then she snatched up the fork from her plate and attacked him with it. It was sickening. Angie and I both went at her, trying to pull her away, but something bad really cracked in her. She kicked and scratched and fought like a wildcat; she was absolutely uncontrollable, and when first our chairs, then our table had been overturned and Mel was bleeding, I took off my jacket and threw it over her head, trying to subdue her, and we went to the floor. Her shrieks were hoarse and intermittent and I could see her fingers clawing the air. Figures had appeared from the kitchen and were staring down as we writhed in the wetness, until I clambered astride her, holding her arms down while she went on thrashing and kicking. No one approached us until, after what seemed hours, I heard a siren’s wail and then two cops rushed in. I didn’t want to let them near her, but they literally dragged me off her, and when she was free of my jacket she scrabbled away from us. Then, as the cops closed in on her, she went crazy again, cursing and kicking like a madwoman.

I’d never seen anything close to this; I couldn’t even have imagined such a thing. They used force to quell her, they handcuffed her and shoved her toward the door. The overhead lights had come on, people crowded around, and I heard the famous name being buzzed about while the whole place ogled the scene.

“Hey, wait,” I called, hurrying after the police, but I slipped in the water and went down on my ass again. It was Mel who helped me up.

“It’s okay,” he said in my ear, “let them have her. I can get her out.”

Angie, who’d run out with them, came back in shaking her head. “Mel, are you hurt?” His arm was perforated from the hand up, the dark skin bathed in red, and she peered at him anxiously.

“It’s all right, don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll play again.” His little joke. The pianist, a guy named Teddy, hit the keys, the waiters were cleaning up the mess, the lights went down, and Angie and I followed Mel into the cubicle where the musicians hung out between sets.

“Didn’t I tell you the bitch’d pull something like this one night?” said Johnny, the guitar player. Someone had come up with a first-aid kit, and Angie was swabbing Mel’s wounds with alcohol.

“I think we should take you to get this looked at,” she said. “There’s no telling where that fork may have been.”

“Most likely in her mouth,” said Johnny Guitar. Someone brought me my sport jacket. It was a mess. I felt for my wallet, but the pocket was empty. I looked in all the other pockets, then tossed the coat in the basket. Nobody knew nothin’ ’bout nothin’. I told myself it was my own damn fault for meddling.

Mel said he’d meet Angie and me at the police station. She left her car and drove with me, but at the station there was a real foul-up. Belinda was giving the boys in blue more of the same—we could hear her strident voice coming from somewhere in back. Mel was at the desk talking quietly to the sergeant. “You know who that is?” he asked in his low voice.

“Damn right. Big stuff, she is. She’s really buzzed. What’s she on, anyway?”

“She’s been ailing, she don’t feel so good. Pills, maybe.”

“You her friend?” the sergeant asked.

Angie pushed forward. “We’re all her friends. She’s sick, she needs help. Must you keep her in there? Can’t we take her to the hospital, get her to a doctor?”

“Don’t see her going anywhere in her present condition,” the sergeant said laconically.

“What’s the charge?” I asked, stepping up.

“Let’s start with a d. and d. and then take it from there. When she quiets down maybe we can see about some bail. Why don’t you folks go along home and get some sleep. She’s not going to do anyone any good tonight.”

“Officer, will this get in the papers?” Angie asked in a low voice. The sergeant shrugged.

“Not from these lips.” He glanced around the room; there were a dozen people in it, each of whom knew that Belinda Carroll, world-famous star, was shut up behind those green bars. And God knew what was going to happen when they let her out again.

I waited with Mel while Angie went to telephone Maude for help, and when she hung up she reported that Felix Pass was on the way. Felix Pass was a brilliant attorney, one of Beverly Hills’ best, but he couldn’t get anyone to fix bail. Next morning Belinda appeared before Judge Eugene Hahn of the second circuit court of California and was sentenced by him to ninety days in the county jail. He was known as “Rockpile” Hahn.

Much was made of these events in the press, and the photographers had been accorded the privilege of photographing the prisoner at her arraignment. She had a black eye and a swollen lip, and her clothes were torn. Formalities over, they rode her down to Lincoln Heights, where she began serving her sentence. At first she was in a cell with a woman being held for possession of narcotics and child negligence. She got into a fight with Belinda and both women had to be placed in the infirmary. After that Belinda was given a cell of her own. At the end of twenty-one days Felix Pass got her released in the custody of her former mother-in-law and she was let out the back way. The press made capital of the fact that a Rolls-Royce with an Oriental driver arrived to pick up the freed jailbird and drove through the crowd that had gathered amid a flurry of flashing bulbs. Other vehicles trailed the Silver Cloud onto the Hollywood Freeway, coming off at the Bowl exit onto Highland, then traveling at a measured pace along Sunset into Beverly Hills. Just past the hotel, the procession turned into Benedict Canyon, then wound its way up and up among the green foliage until the passengers were looking down on the rooftops that dotted the landscape—most of them red-tiled in the old California mission style.

Close to the top, on Caligula Way, the Rolls proceeded through the twin gates of the famous estate known as Sunnyside, the residence that had been built by Crispin Antrim fifty years before. None of the pursuing vehicles was allowed to enter. The gates closed behind the Rolls as it drew up to the entrance, where Maude Antrim was waiting to help Belinda inside. The door closed, the car drove away, all was quiet. Belinda Carroll was not seen again for a long time.

That was it. They scratched her off, one more alkie, gone the same road as Frances Farmer and a host of other Hollywood beauties, talented ladies who’d skidded and forgot to jam on the brakes or braked too hard on the curves. In Hollywood gone is forgotten, and she was forgotten; mercifully, it seemed, because she didn’t need cameras poking in at her or reporters with pencils in the bands of their fedoras, not that reporters wore fedoras anymore.

She was “under treatment,” as it was generally stated in whatever notice was taken of her. She’d gone the way of all flesh, she’d been walking the Boulevard of Broken Dreams too long; had she been another kind of woman she might have taken the dive off the Hollywood sign. For two years she never appeared in public. A steady progress of medicos came in and went out through the gates, sometimes she was driven in the Rolls to a clinic for an X-ray or an EKG; that was about it. I was in Europe again and not privy to what was going on, but I wrote her, wrote often, though she didn’t write me back. I wasn’t any help anyway; I was drinking myself in those days—it’s where I got my calories; I sure wasn’t eating much.

One day an unobtrusive-looking car drove through the gates of Sunnyside. No one would have recognized the driver, but it was Belinda, driving herself for the first time in a long while. She drove over to Pico Boulevard, where she parked and entered a church. She walked down a flight of stairs and went into the community room. It was not smoke-filled, nor did it have fluorescent lighting. She was surprised at the number of familiar faces she saw there; a couple of them were old friends, people she wasn’t even aware had a Problem. Six times she went and never said a word coming or going. She hid her hair under a scarf, her eyes behind dark glasses. Her hands still shook and she was always thirsty. She drank lots of orange juice for the vitamin C, she chewed gum or her nails, and her voice developed an unattractive hoarseness. On her seventh visit, Angie accompanied her. Angie was the one who made her do it. She raised her hand and when she was called upon she stood up and said, “Hello—my name’s Belinda Carroll and I’m an alcoholic.”

Those were hard-wrung words for her, words that embarked her on a journey; not the kind you take for sightseeing, but the long, bitter journey that a soul in chains makes when it fights its way back from the darkest corners or up from the deepest crevasses.

I wasn’t present to witness this crucial moment in the life of one of the world’s most famous women—I was in New York experiencing a similar, crucial beginning myself—nor was I present on that famous night over a decade later, to feel the thrill of hearing her name announced to a worldwide audience of millions.

Holding the gold statuette they’d just handed her, she smiled to her many well-wishers in the audience and gave this speech:

“I always wanted to be standing here, like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn, my heroines, and be holding this little fellow in my hands. That I am standing here at all is as much a wonder to me as my having won tonight. I truly think I must be home in bed asleep and this is just a dream. But it’s a beautiful dream, a lovely dream. I—I have a lot of people to thank, more than you can imagine and more than I can ever hope to think of.” She went on to thank those people connected with the film that had won her the award, saving her deepest thanks for the man who’d made her. Upon mention of Frank Adonis’s name the audience forced her to wait while they applauded; then she listed in turn each of the major stars whose careers Frank had either kicked off or helped to boost, with one notable omission.

Her closing remark was particularly heartfelt. “And I especially want to thank all of my friends who are all the friends of Bill and who have done so much to help me. You know who you are. God bless you, everyone.”

Later on the wags were saying that she’d sounded like Pollyana, but what did that matter? She had her goddamned Oscar in her mitt. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it. I’ve kissed the darn thing. But what most people wanted to know was, who were the “friends of Bill’s” she was talking about? There wasn’t really any reason for most people to know, but the ones who did had the best reasons in the world, because they were all saved. Back from the brink, out of the pit. They’d all come in out of the rain along with Belinda Carroll. Those people were in A.A., that most anonymous of organizations, but Belinda Carroll had gone public on a worldwide hook-up and that was the big hurrah. Pretty soon just about everybody knew who “Bill” was.

B
ACK IN THE EARLY
thirties a young woman of no particular distinction arrived at the Hollywood bus station on Vine Street, a few blocks east of Wilcox Avenue, where Mrs. Wilcox’s house had once stood. Like thousands of others, this screen hopeful had blown in from the American Midwest seeking fame and fortune. Her name was Peg Entwhistle, and like Dorothy she came from Kansas to the Land of Oz; but unlike Dorothy she never clicked her red shoes three times and got back home to an anxiously waiting Auntie Em. This was Peg’s bad luck. At that time there was a local real-estate company owned by Mack Sennett and some lesser lights, and as a suitable advertisement for their company they erected a tall block-letter sign in the hills, spelling out in characters three stories high the name “
HOLLYWOODLAND
.” A real smart deal. Today the sign still stands—part of it anyway—and with the passing of time it has become the unofficial trademark of Hollywood, suitably tawdry and commonplace, just the right degree of rundown tackiness. New York has its Empire State Building, Chicago has the Wrigley Building, St. Louis the Gateway Arch, San Francisco the Golden Gate Bridge, and Hollywood a battered realty sign.

As for Peg, she proved ordinary enough, hardly movie fodder, conventionally pretty, like ten thousand other movie-struck girls, with passable legs and firm breasts but little else to recommend her, including talent. She peroxided her hair and beat on the doors to fame and fortune for about two years, doors that stubbornly remained closed to her until, despairing of ever tasting success, our Peg climbed to the very top of the last letter of
HOLLYWOODLAND
—the thirteenth letter—and dashed herself onto the ground among the sharp yucca plants. The coroner’s report stated that she died of a self-inflicted broken neck, but this was not strictly true: what Peg really died of was a broken heart.

They sort of told it all in
A Star Is Born
—only there the girl, Esther Blodgett, really makes it. But the chances are something like a million to one. The smart ones hustle on back to the dime store or the farm, settle down with some guy in overalls, and raise kids that get mumps and measles. The dumb ones stick it out and end up like Peg, splat in the yucca patch.