Tinseltown Confidential Read online

  She stayed silent while he spoke, then finally said, “You’re a schmuck.”

  Her declaration snuffed out the last vestige of marijuana left in Marcus’ system. “Come again?”

  “That gang at Canter’s, you heard their stories. They’ve worked with Griffith, Cagney, Lombard, and now they’re standing around drafty sets, dressed up like farmers’ wives and prospectors and churchgoers, sometimes for hours on end. Did you hear any of them complain? No. And you know why? Not just because they like to pay their rent and buy new shoes once in a while. They also like to feel as though they can still contribute. Okay, so most days it’s just walking back and forth across some phony-baloney British village square or podunk cattle town. But thanks to television, it’s regular. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t exactly see you flush with cash, so maybe it’s time to pull your head out of your ass.”

  He eyeballed her dead reefer while he tried to think of an appropriate response.

  “Look.” She eased off the preaching a notch. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to go back to The Lone Ranger, but how about this: my friend Lucy Ball—”

  “Lucille Ball is a friend of yours?”

  “We shared a dressing room at RKO way back when. Anyway, she and her husband are putting together a new TV show. I could call in a favor and maybe get you regular work doing background. They shoot at General Services Studios over on—”

  “Las Palmas Avenue. Yes, I know it.”

  “So what’s with the face?”

  “General Services Studios is where Lone Ranger shoots.”

  “Remember when I said that it’s time to pull your head out of your ass?”

  “I’m pulling it out as we speak.”

  “So if I call in my favor with Lucy, it won’t be for nothing, will it?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She stared at him, not blinking. “So are you going to take me home, or do I have to walk?”

  He started his engine, and pulled back onto Hollywood Boulevard. Without another word, she lit the remnants of her cigarette and handed it to him.

  CHAPTER 12

  Kathryn threaded a fresh sheet of paper into her typewriter. Her fingers poised over the keys but remained paralyzed in midair. After an entire minute of indecision, she told herself to just start typing. Sometimes it was better to let the column write itself.

  The word out of merrie olde Londontown is that director William Wyler has found his princess. Over the protests of Paramount brass, he wants to film his next pic, Roman Holiday, in Hollywood on the Tiber. Here are three things I can tell you about the frontrunner: She’s a gamine newbie named Audrey Hepburn; she’s a ballet dancer; and she’s not related to The Other Hepburn.

  And speaking of The Other Hepburn, she plans to end her MGM contract with the Cukor-helmed Pat and Mike.

  Kathryn lit another cigarette. The real news wasn’t the casting of this Hepburn nobody, but that the most tarnished screenwriter of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo, had written the movie but couldn’t be credited on what had all the earmarks of a hit.

  She took another drag and doodled the word “graylist” on her steno pad. When she arrived on the Quo Vadis set, she’d immediately noticed the gray creeping into Marcus’ temples. She thought he looked rather distinguished, but the next morning, when she looked at herself in the hotel vanity, she found a gray hair of her very own.

  The discovery shocked her to the core.

  “Gray” meant “middle-aged,” which meant there now were as many productive years behind her as there were ahead. Gray hair marked the beginning of the end. Suddenly, it felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day to push back against unspoken accusations of has-been and past-her-prime.

  But meanwhile, she had a million tasks and only ten little fingers.

  She picked up her jangling phone.

  “The boss wants to see you.” It was Wilkerson’s secretary.

  “Right now? I’ve got three more columns to write before I can get out the door. I’m going to see Lili St. Cyr at Ciro’s tonight, after which I’ll have to do a write-up—”

  “Okay, so I’ll explain that you can’t see him because you’re going to see a stripper.”

  She told Vera she’d be there in a couple of minutes. She banged out a few more sentences about Katharine Hepburn’s imminent departure from MGM. First Mayer and now Hepburn? Sometimes it really did feel like the end of civilization.

  She walked into Billy Wilkerson’s office without knocking, then wished she had when she saw that her boss was not alone.

  Wilkerson rose from his desk. “Ah, Kathryn, come in, come in.” He was using his statesman voice, which he employed when he was trying to impress someone.

  The man seated with his back to Kathryn got to his feet.

  He was a clean-cut, neatly turned-out gentleman in his late thirties, with a knowing twinkle in his eye and a hey-there-sweetcheeks smile on his face. Kathryn felt the fine hair at the nape of her neck stand up as she ran through the possible scenarios that could explain why Variety’s lead columnist was standing in Wilkerson’s office.

  “Kathryn,” Wilkerson said, “this is Mike Connolly.”

  “So nice to finally meet you.” Connolly’s handshake had all the firmness of last week’s dinner napkin. “I’m surprised we haven’t met already.”

  Because I’ve avoided you like a dose of the clap.

  Kathryn disagreed with pretty much everything Connolly wrote: politics, religion, censorship, daring casting choices, and anyone whose view diverged from his own. Both Louella and Hedda flew their broomsticks around the same right-hand end of the political spectrum, so that wasn’t what bothered Kathryn. Connolly’s perspective lacked flexibility and nuance. The only acceptable opinion on any given subject was his, and anyone with an alternate position should take cover.

  On the plus side, he was well read and possessed an Algonquinesque wit. She would have admired his dexterity with language but for his inclination to use the royal plural.

  Now that they were face-to-face, she could see he was a swisher. All those years at the Garden had sharpened Kathryn’s senses. One look at Connolly and she could tell he was a vicious queen bee—or could turn into one with a few drinks inside him.

  Intuition warned her to proceed carefully. Columnists from rival papers rarely stepped into hostile territory.

  “Yes,” Kathryn said mildly, “it is remarkable we’ve never bumped into each other.” She shot Wilkerson a Why is this guy here?

  “I have news!” Wilkerson beamed like a five-year-old at Christmas. “Starting next week, Mr. Connolly will be taking over the Rambling Reporter column.”

  Kathryn felt like she’d been kicked in the groin. For the past sixteen years, she’d worked six, sometimes seven days a week to ensure that the industry read her Window on Hollywood first, thus reducing the Rambling Reporter to an I’ll-read-it-when-I-get-around-to-it.

  “Is that right?” Kathryn reminded herself that she would be absent from the office for a few weeks, so now might not be a great time to make a bad first impression. “In that case, welcome to the Reporter—rambling and otherwise.”

  Connolly thanked her and reached for the white straw panama on Wilkerson’s desk. “I must skedaddle,” he said. “I have an interview lined up with Billy Graham. Did you see his Christian Western, Mr. Texas, at the Bowl last week?”

  Kathryn couldn’t think of anything more tedious. She shook her head.

  “I thought it a pretty good first movie. If the God-fearing Mr. Graham plans on getting into the film biz, it would behoove the Hollywood Reporter to get in tight with him. ’Bye now!”

  Kathryn waited until he was outside earshot. “A warning might have been nice.”

  Wilkerson was already holding his hands up. “Don’t go reading anything into this. He’s no Ruby Courtland. He’ll do the gossipy, trivial celebrity stuff, which will free you up to tackle what you do best: highbrow, industry-wide issues.”

  “Fine.�
� She had more columns to write and it was already after three o’clock. “I’m just saying that—”

  “You want I should consult you on all staff appointments, or just when assigning columns?”

  She ignored his no-win question. “Aren’t you going to wish me good luck? I’m off on my national tour tomorrow. Baking cakes from here to Fifth Avenue.”

  He came out from behind his desk and planted a paternal kiss on her cheek. “I was planning to make a speech at lunchtime, but . . .”

  “But Mike Connolly. Yeah, I know.”

  “Break a leg. Do they say that in radio?”

  “Just hope I don’t embarrass myself in front of America’s housewives.”

  “Do us proud, Massey. We’ll keep your seat warm while you’re gone.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of.

  * * *

  Earlier in the year, Kathryn’s antenna had quivered when Ciro’s announced that they would soon be presenting Lili St. Cyr. While Gypsy Rose Lee cast witty asides as she discarded items of clothing that revealed very little, Lili had curves and legs and cleavage, and wasn’t shy in letting her fans know that they would see as much of her as the law permitted.

  Over the past year or so, Kathryn had seen a gradual dwindling of nightclub attendance. Until recently, people had thought nothing of going home to change, put on fresh makeup, and drive clear across town to the Biltmore Bowl or Mocambo or King’s Tropical Inn. But now there was a box in the living room that could serve up entertainment with the flick of a knob. Wasn’t it easier to forgo all that effort and watch Toast of the Town or Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts instead?

  Just as movie house audiences were shrinking, nightclubs needed to book headliners if they were going to draw people off their sofas. And that meant matching the ever-increasing fees that Las Vegas casinos paid.

  Kathryn dragged Marcus along when Ciro’s debuted “the stripper on the Strip.” Even though Kathryn thought the act bravely toed the line between provocative and indecent, she wasn’t sure it was right for audiences raised on Xavier Cougat, Marlene Dietrich, and Joe E. Lewis. But St. Cyr packed houses and garnered inches of press.

  After she wowed Las Vegas, Ciro’s announced a return engagement for a much-trumpeted 1,250 smackers per week. Kathryn hadn’t felt any great need to see the show again until the stacked cigarette girl at Ciro’s called her to suggest she might want to book a table—on Thursday night, specifically. When Kathryn asked why, Phyllis said, “Yesterday, the bartender told me not to call in sick tomorrow. When I asked why, he tried to make out like he was just fooling around, but I got me a strong intuition that you should be here.”

  It was the last thing Kathryn felt like doing, but if she could leave town with a strong story, she could ride it for a few days.

  The club was jam-packed. Bogie was there—without Bacall; Lana Turner was too, with the boyfriend-du-jour, Lex Barker, the screen’s latest Tarzan. Chatter boomed through the main room.

  Kathryn managed to finish her columns by six o’clock, but packing for her three-week trip proved more arduous than she’d bargained for. Leo had given her a clothing allowance, which she promptly spent at Chez Gwendolyn. What seemed like a godsend became a problem when she tried to fit everything into her steamer trunk. Thankfully, Bertie had one she could borrow, but pulling it out of the Garden of Allah’s basement wasted time she didn’t have.

  Consequently, Kathryn made it to Ciro’s just in time to order a manhattan as she joined Marcus, Gwendolyn, and Leo at their ringside table.

  “Have I missed anything?” she asked over the din.

  “Too packed for tablehopping,” Marcus said. “Mostly been air-kiss blowing and I’ll-call-you-soon handkerchief waving.”

  Kathryn found Phyllis on the other side of the room tending to Ronnie Reagan. It was too close to showtime to say hello. She swigged a mouthful of manhattan.

  He’ll do the trivial celebrity stuff while you stick to the highbrow issues.

  As high-falutin’ as that sounded, people preferred bitchy gossip about who’s screwing who behind whose back to industry issues like blacklists in an industry that was losing customers to an easy alternative.

  Kathryn tapped a fingernail against her glass. Connolly had never hidden his right-wing views. Was Wilkerson getting sick of her liberal politics? She pulled out her final cigarette and lit it. Connolly starting at the Reporter when she was on tour for weeks was one hell of a coincidence. And besides, who said I can’t write bitchy gossip? Look where I am right now—about to watch a stripper go through her paces.

  Marcus tapped her forearm and discreetly pointed toward the bar. “That brown suit has been watching us since you sat down. And by ‘us’ I mean ‘you.’”

  The guy looked like a hoodlum who spent his nights in the mob’s back room counting the clams. “Someone needs to cook him a meal.”

  Leo’s hand slid on top of hers. “Everything okay?”

  The five musicians took up their instruments as the house lights faded to soft twilight. The drums started to roll, then over the loudspeakers, “The best dressed undressed lady in the theater—please welcome Miss Lili St. Cyr!”

  As the lights came up, the striking blonde appeared in a swirl of mink and jewels. The curtains parted to reveal a translucent bathtub. The centerpiece of Lily’s act was taking a leisurely bath followed by a protracted ritual of wrapping herself in a large white towel as she selected a dress.

  For a striptease, the act possessed a level of elegance not previously seen on the Sunset Strip. Although she lacked the pipes of Piaf and wasn’t a powder keg like Kay Thompson, she got away with being erotic but not dirty because she refused to take herself seriously. And it was a good thing she didn’t. The woman was probably in her mid-thirties now. Too early for gray hair, but it’d start showing before long.

  And God knows, the years peel away faster and faster, Kathryn thought. Good for Lili for making the most of them. She probably knows there’s always going to be someone younger and prettier waiting in the wings.

  The lights lowered as Lili made her exit amid enthusiastic, albeit restrained, applause. Kathryn pulled out her notepad and made a few notes. She wasn’t quite finished when she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was Phyllis, the cigarette girl.

  “You might want to get backstage.”

  “Why?”

  “A police captain by the name of Sutton just walked in. I hadda deal with him when I worked at Florentine Gardens. The gal with him’s got ‘lady cop’ written all over her.”

  “Is Lili being arrested?” Kathryn was already on her feet.

  Phyllis pointed to a side door the band had used. “It’ll take you to the dressing rooms.”

  Kathryn picked her way around the crowded tables. A blitzed Mickey Rooney called her over, but she pretended not to hear. The door opened to a narrow corridor. On the left was a fire escape leading to Sunset; to the right a short hallway opened onto a large square space with several doorways. A few people milled around, including some band members and an anxious Latin-lover type, presumably Lili’s latest husband. Kathryn knocked on the door signposted with a star.

  “Enter!”

  Lili was dressed in a floor-length white silk robe, seated at her makeup mirror. She dabbed at the sweat on her forehead. “You’re Kathryn Massey, aren’t you? I noticed you in the audience tonight. Come on in. I’m so happy you came back to see me.”

  Kathryn took a tentative step into the spacious dressing room that was crammed with sparkling costumes and props. “My information could be wrong, but apparently, members of the police are in the house right now.”

  “Cops?” Lili stood up and tightened the sash around her waist. “I’ve shown more flesh in burlesque houses far less classy than this.”

  “Still, you might—”

  A loud knock on the door cut Kathryn off. A stern woman in a utilitarian suit strode into the dressing room and headed for the sequined G-string hanging from the armrest of Lili’s sofa. A thickset guy
followed her.

  “Miss St. Cyr,” he announced, “I’m Captain Sutton, and I am placing you under arrest for an indecent performance and lewdly exposing your person.”

  He sounded so archaic that Kathryn burst out laughing. “Oh, come on,” she said. “It’s not like we saw anything.”

  “Please get dressed, Miss St. Cyr. We’re taking you downtown.”

  Lili slowed her movements. “Okay, but I’m not wearing anything under this robe.” She grabbed Kathryn and headed toward a dressing area behind an elaborate Oriental screen lacquered black with red and white storks. “Don’t fret your panties, you two,” she said over her shoulder. “There’s only one door out of here, and you’re standing in front of it.”

  Behind the screen, Lili dropped her robe to reveal that she was quite naked. She grabbed her bra. “What’ll I do?” she whispered.

  Up close and without the benefit of baby pink spotlights, Lili looked older and more careworn.

  “So this wasn’t a publicity stunt?” Kathryn asked.

  Lili’s blue eyes widened in genuine surprise—or at least what appeared to be. She pointed to a linen skirt, which Kathryn unzipped and held open for her.

  “I was tipped off about this.”

  “By who?”

  Kathryn thought of the semi-sleazy guy Marcus had pointed out, and played a hunch. “Did you see the character at the back of the room? The skinny one in the hat.”

  “No.” Lili lifted her arms to let Kathryn zip her in.

  “Miss St. Cyr!” Captain Sutton knew a thing or two about voice projection. “If you please?”

  “There isn’t even a window I can crawl out of, so hold your goddamned horses.” Lili put on a matching jacket and pointed to a shoebox leaning against the wall. “Personally, I think Hover’s behind this.” Herbert Hover was Ciro’s owner, as well as its master of publicity who, Kathryn had noticed lately, had started to compete more strenuously with Mocambo farther down the Strip.