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  “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.”

  10

  i get through the

  looking glass

  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 the
m 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.

  I didn’t dislike the men for being rich or being indifferent to money. But something hurt me in my heart when I saw their easy come, easy go thousand dollar bills.

  One evening a rich man said to me, “I’ll buy you a couple of real outfits, fur coats and all. And I’ll pay your rent in a nice apartment and give you an eating allowance. And you don’t even have to go to bed with me. All I ask is to take you out to cafés and parties and for you to act as if you were my girl. And I’ll say good night to you outside your door and never ask you to let me in. It’ll just be a make-believe affair. What do you say?”

  I answered him, “I don’t like men with fancy schemes like you. I like straightforward wolves better. I know how to get along with them. But I’m always nervous with liars.”

  “What makes you think I’m lying?” he asked.

  “Because if you didn’t want me you wouldn’t try to buy me,” I said.

  I didn’t take their money, and they couldn’t get by my front door, but I kept riding in their limousines and sitting beside them in the swanky places. There was always a chance a job and not another wolf might spot you. Besides, there was the matter of food. I never felt squeamish about eating my head off. Food wasn’t part of any purchase price.

  11

  how i made a calendar

  My chief problem next to eating, stockings, and rent, was my automobile. I had made a down payment on a small, secondhand car. But the hundred and fifty I still owed on it was Sweepstake money.

  The second month I received a letter saying if I didn’t make the fifty dollar monthly payment the company would have to repossess the car. I inquired of a girl I knew at Central Casting what the word meant and she told me.

  The third month a man knocked on my door, showed me a document, and repossessed my car.

  “On the receipt of fifty dollars,” the man said, “the company will be glad to restore the car to your custody.”

  A movie job hunter without a car in Hollywood was like a fireman without a fire engine. There were at least a dozen studios and agents’ offices you had to visit every day. And they were in a dozen different districts, miles away from each other.

  Nothing came of these visits. You sat in a waiting room of the Casting Department. An assistant came out of a door, looked over the assembled group and said, “There’s nothing today. Leave your names and phone numbers.” That was almost a break—the second sentence. “Leave your names and phone numbers.” Usually they uttered only the first sentence.

  In the Agency office it was a little more complicated. Because the agents weren’t as sincere as the Casting Departments. They were inclined to string you along, utter a few wolf calls, make promises, and try out a wrestling hold or two. Nothing came of it, but you had to keep coming back. Agents sometimes had “ins” and jobs.

  Ring Lardner wrote a story once about a couple of girls who saved up their money and went to Palm Beach, Florida, to mingle with the social elite of that famous resort. He said they stopped at a swell hotel, and every evening “They romped out on the veranda to enjoy a few snubs.” That’s the way it was with me. Except without an automobile, I could do very little romping.

  I did everything possible to get the car back. I spent days tracking down the Marshall and the Sheriff of Los Angeles. I visited the company that had done the repossessing. I even contemplated calling up a few millionaires I knew. But I couldn’t. When I started to dial one of their numbers a hot angry feeling filled me, and I had to hang up. I realized this wasn’t quite normal, but all I could do was throw myself on the bed and start crying. I would cry and yell and beat the wall with my fists as if I were trying to break out of someplace. Then I would lie still for a day or two and go without food and wish I were dead—as if I were Norma Jean again looking out of the orphanage window.

  The phone rang. It was a photographer I knew named Tom Kelley. He and his wife Natalie had been nice to me. I had posed for some beer ads for Tom.

  “Come on over,” he said. “I’ve got a job for you.”

  “This is a little different than the other jobs,” Tom said when I got to his place. “But there’s fifty dollars in it for you, if you want to do it.”

  I told Tom and Natalie about the repossessing of my car.

  “For fifty dollars, I am ready to jump off a roof,” I said.

  “These pictures are for a calendar,” said Tom, “and they will have to be in the nude.”

  “You mean completely nude?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” said Tom, “except they will not be vulgar. You’re ideal for the job not only because you have a fine shape but you’re unknown. Nobody’ll recognize you.”

  “I’m sure unknown,” I said.

  “It would be different if you were a starlet or some such thing,” said Natalie. “Then somebody might recognize you on the calendar.”

  “With you there’ll be no such trouble possible,” said Tom. “It’ll just be a picture of a beautiful nobody.”

  I spent the afternoon posing. I was a little confused at first, and something kept nudging me in my head. Sitting naked in front of a camera and striking joyous poses reminded me of the dreams I used to have as a child. I felt sad that this should be the only dream I ever had to come true.

  After a few poses the depression left me. I liked my body. I was glad I hadn’t eaten much in the past few days. The pictures would show a real washboard stomach. And what difference would it make—the nude of a “beautiful nobody”?

  People have curious attitudes about nudity, just as they have about sex. Nudity and sex are the most commonplace things in the world. Yet people often act as if they were things t
hat existed only on Mars. I thought of such matters as I posed, but the nudging continued in my head. What if I became an actress sometime? A great star? And somebody saw me on the calendar, and recognized me?

  “What are you looking so serious about?” Tom asked.

  “I was just thinking something,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing worth repeating,” I said. “I’m just crazy. I get all kinds of crazy thoughts.”

  I had my car back the next day and was able to romp around from studio to studio and enjoy the usual quota of snubs.

  12

  i jump through

  the paper hoop

  I rushed to Aunt Grace with the big news. I had a job. I could enter a studio without being asked fifty questions. And I didn’t have to sit in a waiting room. I was on a payroll as an actress.

  “It’s the finest studio in the world,” I said. “20th Century-Fox.”

  Aunt Grace beamed and went to the stove for coffee.

  “The people are all wonderful,” I said, “and I’m going to be in a movie. It’ll be a small part. But once I’m on the screen—”

  I stopped and looked at Aunt Grace. She was still smiling at me. But she was standing still. Her face was pale, and she looked tired—as if life was something too heavy to carry much further.

  I put my arms around her and helped her to the table.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “The coffee will fix me up fine.”

  “It’ll be different now for all of us,” I said. “I’ll work hard.”

  We sat a long time and discussed a new name for me. The casting director had suggested I think up some more glamorous name than Norma Dougherty.

  “I’d like to oblige him,” I said. “Especially since Dougherty isn’t my name anymore anyway.”

  “Haven’t you any ideas for a name?” Aunt Grace asked.

  I didn’t answer. I had a name, a real name that thrilled me whenever I thought of it. It belonged to the man with the slouch hat and the Gable mustache. His photograph was now in my possession.