Make Believe (13 page)

The remark puzzled Ethan. “Meaning?”

“Loyalty to the past even though I’ve heard him say the past is dead.”

Ethan frowned. “Frankie is afraid of the future.”

“Come on, Ethan,” Tony pleaded. “Leave Frankie out of this. He’s…our best friend.”

“What do you mean, Ethan?”

He sat back, breathed in. “Something went off kilter with Frankie’s career, so he’s stopped thinking about others—like Tony’s career. About
our
lives. Things have stalled. The wartime bobby-soxers are buying Guy Mitchell records. He used to sell ten million records a year. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Now Columbia is gonna drop him. Do you know why? He sabotaged his career when he hooked up with Ava.”

“I always blamed Max,” Tony offered. “He introduced them.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Nonsense. That’s just not true. Max had nothing to do with Frankie. For God’s sake, Tony. The man is dead.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yeah, sure. That small-time agent nobody heard of until he became a pinko poster boy. I don’t know where you…”

“You don’t like Ava?” I broke in.

Ethan shrugged. “She’s all right. A fighter.”

“I used to think she
liked
me,” Tony said. “I made her laugh. But she’s too much a hellcat. A crooner’s supposed to have a girl, you know, like…”

“Like his wife Nancy,” Ethan went on.

“Ah, the fireside Madonna,” I said.

“You know, Frankie is a womanizer, plain and simple. But he’s not a man to divorce the mother of his three kids. Think about it. His Nancy is a beautiful woman herself, a hometown bride, good Italian Catholic girl, homemade tomato sauce you can weep over—well, you got a girl on the side, that’s okay. Next week you go back to Nancy. Another girl, some nightclub tramp. Always back to Nancy, who sits there piling up pasta in front of you. You eat so much you can’t leave the house. That’s marriage in Hoboken.” Ethan laughed now, a long rumbling chuckle. “Ava comes along and changes the rules. She says…you have to
divorce
her.”

“The nuns in New Jersey are praying for Nancy.” Tony was dropping sugar cubes into his cup of coffee and stirring with his finger.

“It’s true,” Ethan added. “Catholics don’t divorce.”

Tony stammered loudly, “Ava made him go crazy. That’s the problem. With her looks and that temper, she…” He trailed off.

“You know,” I concluded, “Frank is a big boy. And from what I’ve seen of him these past few days, he likes to call the shots. He does just what he wants to do.”

Tony sipped his coffee but sloshed some on the table. Ethan frowned and blotted the spill with his napkin. “Be careful, Tony.”

Tony ignored him. “He got a weakness, Miss Ferber. Beautiful women. I mean, when he came to Hollywood he made a list of the gorgeous actresses in town and taped it to his dressing room mirror. Lana Turner. Marlene Dietrich. And he’s checked them off, one by one…”

Ethan slammed his hand into Tony’s shoulder. “Don’t tell Miss Ferber that. She’ll think little of him.”

“I couldn’t think less of him than I already do.”

Ethan eyed me suspiciously. “We’re loyal to Frankie. No matter his…his weaknesses. He’s only human. Frankie and Lenny were blood brothers. A bond to the grave.”

“Is his career really over?”

Tony started to sputter, but Ethan got reflective. “Let me tell you a story, Miss Ferber.” A hint of sarcasm laced his drawn-out words. “I know you like stories. You make your living at it, no?”

“And a good one, I assure you.”

“I had to be in New York earlier this year. Some work at the Metro offices in Times Square. Frankie happened to be playing a date there. He’d performed somewhere in the city to a half-empty house, which made him depressed as all get out. So one night I went with him out to Hoboken, some rinky-dink piss-water joint where he sang as a favor to some local hood. Well, that night he had no voice, scratchy, off-key. Nothing comes out. A blank. The audience booed and hissed and drove him off the stage.”

Tony interrupted. “Nobody got class there.”

Ethan squinted his eyes. “In Hoboken? Anyway, Frankie, he’s down in the dumps. So that night, back in the city, the two of us are walking through Times Square. A cold March night, snow showers, nippy. Suddenly there’s crowds of screaming, hysterical girls, a wild scene, these girls pushing against a police barricade. Dumbfounded, we stood there. I looked at Frankie and he looked at me. ‘What the hell?’ he asked. And then we looked up at the marquee and you know what it said?”

I shook my head.

“Eddie Fisher. It said Eddie goddamn Fisher. Some new headliner on the block. Fresh-scrubbed, brand-new. I’d never heard of him.”

“And Frank?”

“Frankie got drunk and smashed his fist through a hotel wall. I had to call a doctor.”

“It’s because of Ava,” Tony stammered. “They want that small-town boy who’s wholesome in the tux and bow tie, the boy next store, married to the good Catholic girl. Not a slut who breaks up marriages.”

I rolled my tongue into the corner of my mouth. “Ava is a plain, simple girl right off the farm. At heart.”

“A Jezebel,” Tony thundered. “I used to
like
her. That was when she liked
me
.”

“Shut up, Tony,” Ethan said.

“It’s a shame you missed my act at Poncho’s in the Valley, Miss Ferber. My stand-up show. I was damn good.”

Ethan was frowning. “I doubt that Miss Ferber would be entertained by your brand of humor.”

Tony bristled. “
Everyone
liked me.” He peered into my face. “Miss Ferber, I was real good at insults—real funny. People came back for more. I tell a dumb joke, the audience heckles me, and I insult them. Pick people out. You should have seen me.”

“Tiny, in my social circle I’m the one who delivers the insults. It’s never the other way around.”

Chapter Ten

Desmond Peake stood outside the MGM town car like a ramrod sentry, heels together, arms locked at his side, mirrored sunglasses shielding his eyes. A black double-breasted suit and a shirt so laundry-day white it dazzled. He reminded me of a Prussian extra in an old von Stroheim silent movie—some robotic underling. I feared he’d salute me as I hurried toward the door opened by the Negro chauffeur.

Mr. Peake greeted me with a facile nod, muttered my name, and ushered me into the back seat where he handed me a sheaf of typed sheets, including a publicity release for
Show Boat
. Silent, mechanical. The well-oiled manikin.

He’d called last night to confirm that I’d be at the scheduled private showing of
Show Boat
. “So long as I’m back by four in the afternoon. Max’s memorial service.”

He’d grumbled and didn’t answer.

“I’m Desmond Peake,” he announced now. “Metro liaison.”

“I know.”

A tall string bean of a man, all joint and angle, pale worm-white skin, splotchy with patches of sickly red. Large, flinty gray eyes, magnified behind enormous black-framed eyeglasses which replaced the sunglasses as he slid into the seat next to me. A thin Clark Gable mustache incongruously plastered to his weak upper lip gave his Ichabod Crane physiognomy a rarefied comic touch. But there was nothing funny about Desmond Peake. Officious, Metro’s gatekeeper for scandal and misdeed. Or so Max had warned me.

“He’s the studio’s favorite interference man, a passionless henchman, a founding member of America First, a watchdog group of right-wing fanatics dedicated to policing Hollywood. He lives and breathes Metro. In fact, when he walked me out of the studio and confiscated my I.D., he did so without speaking more than a few words, a sardonic smile on his face.” He’d chuckled. “You’ll enjoy his company, Edna.”

As the Lincoln town car buzzed down Wilshire Boulevard, sped across white concrete pavement, everything pasty yellow under an early-morning sun, even the ragged palm trees seemed props from a desert melodrama. Unnatural city, imagined, temporary, built up to be torn down. Everyone seemed to change one’s mind a moment later in L.A.

In New York folks believed they got things right the first time. I liked that in a city.

The town car slid out of downtown, headed out to Culver City, Metro’s hundred-acre sprawling world of soundstages, cottages, sandstone buildings, commissaries, imposing walls and gates, fantasy backdrops, a self-contained world of wondrous and gripping story-telling.

“Mr. Peale,” I began, “have you seen
Show Boat
?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know if it’s good or bad.”

“It’s good.”

I smiled. “Are you certain?”

“Metro makes musicals. The best. And MGM has more stars than there are in heaven.” A mechanical wind-up toy, though one in need of oil.

“I’ve heard that phrase before.”

“I didn’t make it up.”

“Max Jeffries was my good friend.”

“I know.”

“You knew him, right? His name has been taken off the movie. And then someone murdered him.”

Silence for a time, Desmond examining the cut of a particular fingernail, absorbed in the expensive manicure. The corners of his mouth twitched, though he turned his head away.

I cleared my throat. “How well did you know Max?”

A heartbeat passed, awkward. Then that granite head swiveled, his tongue rolling across his lower lip. “Not well.”

“What did you think of his being blacklisted by Metro?”

Another pause. “I think ‘blacklist’ is a harsh and unnecessary word. Too extreme. There is no blacklist in Hollywood.”

Annoyance laced my words. “What would you call it?”

Desmond clicked his tongue. “I wouldn’t call it anything. It’s not my job.”

“Knowing Max, his touch is all over this new
Show Boat
.”

“That may be.”

“And yet he was barred from showing his face in Culver City. By you.”

“Not my decision, Miss Ferber.” He gazed out the window, trying to close off further talk.

I wouldn’t have it. “When a man does work, he should receive credit for that job. His legacy now, his last movie. A man who touched every movie version of
Show Boat.
”

He didn’t answer. Then, a surprising anger in his tone, he faced me. “You don’t understand the climate out here.”

“Meaning?”

“Moscow has tentacles that reach out and grab and…”

“Nonsense. Max was a good American.”

“Good Americans can be duped, manipulated, deceived. Soviet police agents, firebrands.”

“Max wrote one letter…”

“Look, Miss Ferber.” He sucked in his breath. “You may not believe this, but I always respected Max Jeffries. But Metro has a product to protect. Pinko affiliations hurt not only Metro but…America. God rest his soul, but Max showed himself to be a troublemaker…”

I cut him off, furious now. “Hogwash, young man. A lot of blather and rumor and innuendo. It’s laughable.”

“Max had become a tool for evil.” A dry cough.

I echoed his own words, “Good MGM folks can be duped, manipulated, and deceived.”

He turned away, his shoulders hunched against the door as if he were trying to escape. I noticed a conspicuous vein in his right temple throbbed. The manicured fingers tapped on his pants leg, a hailstorm drum beat.

***

Arrived at Culver City, cruising through back lots of African jungles, New York tenements, artificial lakes, Alpine castles, medieval kingdoms, and all-American small towns, the town car seemed purposely maneuvered through unnecessary by-paths, a circuitous route that suggested the range and power of the massive company. Acres of diamonds, fields of gold, subdivisions of platinum.

A message was being delivered to me, small cog that I was in its world.

Desmond Peake spoke not at all until the chauffeur pulled up in front of a building. Smiling thinly, he escorted me to a projection room in Sound Stage Four, seated me third row center—“Are we on Broadway?” I quipped to his stony face—and then excused himself. I sat alone in that shadowy room. No popcorn? No juju beads? Was I an exile in paradise? Not that I expected to be greeted by Louis B. Mayer, for I was given to understand that he’d been squeezed out of the organization, though he was an early advocate of
Show Boat
and of Ava Gardner herself. Perhaps Dore Schary, the new head honcho, would greet me. But no bigwig appeared. I didn’t hold my breath. I understood that I was a trespasser in an alien landscape.

Of course, I’d already registered my disapproval at Max’s cruel removal from the credits, messages met with silence. After all, having flown across the country to lend Max support and having publicly trumpeted my disillusion with this
Show Boat
remake, I fully expected to sit alone at this courtesy screening for the originator of the money-bags product, the unwed mother of
Show Boat
who now wasn’t on speaking terms with her wayward and flamboyant offspring. So be it.

The lights in the room flickered, on and off, a hidden projector behind me groaned, hiccoughed, whirred, and then the lights popped back on. I heard a door open, a rustling in the aisle and, to my surprise but utter delight, Ava Gardner slid into a seat next to me. She leaned over and smelled like fresh oranges. A quick, friendly hug—yes, I’d come to expect those spontaneous hugs—and vastly appealing at the moment. Dressed in a floral sundress with baggy sleeves and turquoise beads that hugged her neck, her feet encased in jewel-covered strip sandals, she looked ready for a beach party, cocktails on a deck overlooking the Pacific in Malibu. I grinned back at her.

“Bastards,” she muttered. “They told me the wrong time. On purpose, I assume.” She laughed, a whiskey growl. “Lucky I have spies in this house of illusion.”

“But why?”

“You’re tied to Max.”

“Pinko high tide in Hollywood?”

Ava leaned in. “I wanted to be here with you today.” Her cigarette voice got low, confiding. “Edna, I’m nervous about what you’ll think of me in the movie.”

“Why? For heaven’s sake.”

“Because I’m given crappy parts at Metro. I’m a face and legs and bosom. Cheesecake you don’t get at Little John’s Steak House. If I see disapproval in your face…” She breathed in. “It was Max who suggested to the director that I’d be good as Julie. Pop Sidney had worked with me before and liked me. I expected Lena Horne to get the role. She lobbied for it, but she’s also suspect these days, hints of being pinko. And she’s a Negro. Don’t forget that. Black on the outside, pinko inside. She’s a friend of mine, so she understands the politics—she’s been around the block. God, Edna, she
looks
the part of Julie. The mulatto.”

“Why not her?”

“They’d have trouble distributing the film down South. But she sings the Negro songs like Julie should sing.”

“I can’t wait to hear your version.”

“You won’t, I’m afraid. My rendition of ‘Can’t Stop Lovin’ Dat Man’ is
good.
It is. But they’re using Annette Warren’s high-pitched soprano, dubbed in. They don’t
believe
in me.” She snarled, “They’re bastards.”

A hum, a click, a man’s voice yelling something inarticulate, and the lights dimmed. The credits rolled in glorious Technicolor, a wash of vibrant color that pleased me. Ava and I grew silent, though she was leaning so that her shoulder brushed mine. A delight, this wayward daughter comforting a mother who is about to be abundantly disappointed. Magnolia Ravenal at the side of her carping matriarch, Parthenia Hawks. The ingénue and the puritanical mother.

What thrilled, of course, was the music, especially William Winfield’s basso rendition of “Ol’ Man River.” Paul Robeson in 1936 had been brooding, elegiac, gripping, and I confessed to liking that moment in the movie. How could I not? This version was more hopeful, exuberant. Both caused the hair to rise on the back of my neck. Kern’s elegant yet sing-along score haunted me, carried me off. Prepared as I was to dislike the movie, I found I couldn’t: its sheer sweep and color and range held me. It was a big budget extravaganza, no holds barred melodrama. This movie was why they invented a place called Hollywood.

Not that it lacked faults, to be sure—after all, they’d abandoned Oscar Hammerstein’s pithy, intense libretto for some pay-through-the-nose hack’s turgid dialogue. And, of course, they brutalized the last part of the story. The charming cad Gaylord Ravenal had wooed the lovely Magnolia, an onstage romance that became love—and then marriage. My line in my book: “Their make believe adventures as they lived them on the stage became real.” But real life paled, ultimately, when the bounder deserted her.

In this oh-so-happy version Ravenal returns to the boat when they are both young and vital, with daughter Kim still a young child. They warble “Make Believe” as hymn to their blissful reunion, the showboat sailing down the Mississippi into the new and glorious day for all. That was what they called a Hollywood ending.

What truly amazed, though, was Ava as Julie, the half-black, half-white doomed beauty. This new version paradoxically played down the racial underpinnings of my novel and the stage hit, but then, ironically, framed the entire movie around Julie LaVerne, Ava’s presence dictating the narrative. Julie and Steve, the married performers, are turned into the sheriff for the crime of miscegenation. In a dramatic move Steve takes out his switchblade and slashes her finger and drinks her blood. It’s a thrilling moment, staggering melodrama. When the sheriff arrives to arrest them, Steve insists he has Negro blood. After all, one drop of Negro blood makes a soul a Negro in the Old South. So they’re not arrested, but cruelly exiled, the beginning of Julie’s downward path of destruction. Brothels and honky-tonks and alleys. That scene was at the heart of my
Show Boat
. That scene said something important about America.

In this new movie Steve uses a pin to prick her finger—and it’s out of camera shot. Someone not conversant with my book or the stage version might wonder what in the world was happening, this cryptic mixing of blood. Let’s not offend any viewer. God forbid. Please. How bizarre: a Victorian sensitivity to phony propriety in a shell-shocked age that just went through cataclysmic war and holocaust and nuclear annihilation. Please.

But…Julie. Ava. Ava Gardner. A luminous presence, staggering. A beautiful woman in person, even sitting next to me with almost no makeup on, but someone who, captured magnificently on that huge celluloid screen, mesmerized. Her movements, fluid and sulky, demanded your full attention. Kathryn Grayson was pretty and sweet as the girl next door, if next door was traveling on a lumbering showboat. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Pollyanna. The ingénue was the wholesome lass from an operetta. Ava Gardner could never be that girl next door. No, she was the dark of the moon; she was a total eclipse of the sun. You could not take your eyes off her. It helped that I was sitting next to her, experiencing some sort of
doppelganger
moment. She was an actress, surely. I’d not expected that. Helen Morgan, an earlier Julie on Broadway, sat atop an upright piano in a Chicago dive, singing the torch song “Bill.” Just my Bill. Just plain Bill. The ache in your heart when you love so much…Ava moved around the piano, seductively, forlornly. You
watched
her.

It was Ava’s movie. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson could warble, but Julie’s exile and decline defined the movie. You wait, anxious, until she reappears on the screen. When she and Steve leave the showboat, a scene filmed in murky darkness with the ponderous strains of “Ol’ Man River” rising solemnly behind them, you have the movie’s rawest moment. Suddenly, startlingly, I thought of Max, expelled from Metro and Hollywood. Like Julie, a soul dispossessed of life. Exiles from the garden of earthly delights.

Then Ava ends the movie, standing on the shadowy wharf as the showboat drifts down river, Gaylord and Magnolia reunited through her intervention, Julie blowing that final kiss to them and her life on that boat, her only safe haven. She is left now to end her life a drunk and a whore.