All the Stars in the Heavens (10 page)

“The bigger the tub the better. And don't forget the butter.” Spencer reached into his pocket and handed money to Georgie. “I trust you with the funds.”

“I go free because I'm only nine.”

“I knew I liked you.” Spencer reached across and opened the car door.

Alda smiled. She was beginning to feel like one of the Young sisters. They included her in everything from church to going out to restaurants to going to the movies.

“You having fun?” Loretta asked Alda.

“Can you tell?”

“I can't believe you're the same sad-sack kid who showed up at Sunset House a month ago. You're a different person. You're funny and gay and light—you were so somber when you arrived.”

“I was scared. Mother Superior hadn't explained anything. She just said I was going to be a secretary. I didn't know what that meant.”

“So you invented it. It's just like acting. You may not be the part you're playing, but you pretend until you get there.”

“Mr. Tracy makes your job easy, doesn't he?”

“And how.”

“I like him.”

Loretta was wistful. “He's very dear. We're just friends, you know.”

Alda nodded, but what she observed between Loretta and Spencer was more than friendship.

Loretta and Spencer were required to make publicity stills for the studio. A photographer came to the set, and Alda was to keep track of the number of photographs taken, and the context of the photographs. Spencer found a way, just by virtue of having to present particular scenes, to make the shoot last an entire afternoon. Loretta and Spencer had to hold one another, look deep into one another's eyes, and come up with romantic clinches that would sell the movie on a poster. For Alda, the emotions behind the poses seemed real. There wasn't a lot of romance to conjure up because it was obvious.

“I know the difference between acting and real life,” Loretta assured her. Alda nodded, but she knew that Loretta was in dangerous territory. It may have been an innocent friendship at the start, but Alda could see that emotions that had evolved over time ran deep. She was worried about Loretta, and was convinced that she would end up with a broken heart.

The Young sisters took their place on the line. Soon they were recognized, word spread, whispers turned to chatter, and they were quickly surrounded by eager fans. The girls signed autographs, and after a while the manager of the theater came outside to control the throng.

Spencer had parked the car and come around the corner to find the girls in the midst of the frenzy. He stood back and watched them, getting a kick out of their popularity and the politic way they handled the crowd. Loretta felt Spencer's gaze. He winked at her and moved behind the shadow of the palm tree.

“Ladies, look! I think that's Spencer Tracy from
Man's Castle
!”

“Where?” the women shouted.

“Behind the tree!” She pointed.

The ladies made a stampede for Spencer Tracy, surrounding him. He shot Loretta a look. The Young sisters laughed as he was deluged with fans.

“He thinks he's invisible,” Loretta said to Polly.

“He won't after tonight.”

“Sir, will you please pry Mr. Tracy loose from the ladies?” Loretta asked the manager. “We'd love to see the movie.”

The manager obliged, freeing Spencer Tracy and ushering him into the theater with the Young sisters in tow. He led them to a private viewing box over the mezzanine that overlooked the audience and stage, where the screen was obscured behind gold velvet curtains.

“I'm going to get you for that,” Spencer whispered to Loretta.

“They love you, Spence.”

“That's not love, that's fighting over a sweater in a bargain bin. I could've been George Arliss, and they would've gone batty.”

“You're a star.”

“Oh, big deal.”

“It
is
a big deal. The bigger the star, the better the scripts, and the better the scripts, the bigger the career.”

As the theater went dark and the newsreel jumped onto the screen, Georgie and Sally piled into the viewing box with bags of popcorn and bottles of cold soda. Georgie handed Loretta a sack of licorice and gave Spencer his change. Loretta shared the candy with Spencer. When Spencer took Loretta's hand in the dark, every muscle in her body relaxed.

The feature credits appeared on the screen. Claudette Colbert received applause, but when Clark Gable's name appeared, the audience went wild. Sally reached across and yanked Loretta's arm. “He's the king!”

Loretta leaned back in her chair. Spencer leaned forward and looked over the banister of the viewing box to observe the audience. He watched as hundreds of people sat up higher in their seats when Clark Gable walked into the scene. Whatever that guy had, Spencer figured, it was bigger than good acting. It was a mania, a kind of
popularity that he could only imagine. But he had to admit, Gable had technique. He understood the camera and played to it well.

Loretta watched Gable work. He photographed with ease. His gray eyes had a depth in black and white; tall and lean, his posture was both confident and relaxed. Gable's acting had become less presentational and more emotional, an improvement on his earlier roles playing crooks, gangsters, hucksters, and con men in pre-code melodramas. Over time, Gable had dropped the menacing leer, along with other bad stage habits, and begun to use his body to express feeling. He learned to play to the camera, to fill the shot, to use emotion and expression when he said a line instead of playing it in one dimension, as if on a stage. He had become a leading man. Usually it's the studio that decides who will become a star, but it doesn't stick unless the public concurs. As is the alchemy of all good fortune in show business, Gable had the backing of the studio and a fan base that was growing by the week.

Gable appeared polished onscreen yet masculine, his deep dimples giving away a wily humor, a knowingness that the joke was not on him. Loretta saw him with a new admiration and hoped to work with him someday, but she knew it was unlikely. Gable was in demand, and there was a line as long as Ventura Boulevard of leading ladies who wanted a shot at him.

“You're not falling in love with Gable, are you?” Spencer whispered.

“I'd be the only woman in the theater who didn't.”

“Do me a favor, Gretch.”

“What's that?”

“Be the only one who doesn't.”

Loretta looked over at Spence. He didn't take his eyes off the silver screen.

Alda watched the exchange between her boss and Spencer and knew that Loretta was in deep. Alda had heard that Tracy's wife was due to visit the set of
Man's Castle
, and while Alda did not approve of infidelity, she didn't want Loretta to be embarrassed. Alda observed that all the men on the set fell in love with Loretta a little, but on Spencer Tracy's part, it wasn't admiration or a crush. It appeared to Alda to be the real thing, the most dangerous kind of love of all.

The Ides of March blew David Niven, part-time caddy, deckhand, and performer, into Bel Air, practically on horseback. The swabbie was making his move into Hollywood. One of David's equestrian pals from England introduced him to Loretta's sister, Sally Blane, who never met a foreign accent she didn't love. She immediately invited David to dinner at Sunset House, knowing he would charm Gladys and her sisters with his fine manners and scintillating conversation.

David excused himself from the table to take his plate to the kitchen.

Ruby was busy preparing the dessert. “Mr. Niven, get out of my kitchen.”

“Miss Ruby, I grew up in a kitchen. I like to help.”

“I don't need it. Take your English fanny back to the dining room.”

“I've never heard it put that way.”

“Welcome to Ruby's.”

Gladys and the girls listened to the exchange through the door and tried not to laugh.

“Can we keep him, Mama?” Sally begged.

“He's not a stray kitten you found on the side of the road.”

“He's so charming. And funny. I haven't stopped laughing since I met him.”

“Sally, you've been laughing since the day you were born. That hardly qualifies as an endorsement.”

“The pool house is ready for company. You said so yourself,” Loretta reminded her mother. “Properties get gamy when no one lives in them.”

“They start to smell like wet mattresses and old socks,” Sally said. “Better to have a tenant.”

Gladys had taught her daughters well. They were a business, onscreen and off. The girls pooled their money and invested it in houses. Gladys would buy them, fix them up, decorate them, and rent them. When the bank account got high, they'd purchase another property, renovate it, and rent it.

Loretta became the highest earner in the family, so she served as the bank. Real estate in the early days of Hollywood was a genius
investment, but truthfully an innocent one for Gladys Belzer and her family. Gladys simply stuck to what she knew. A renter all her life, she understood what was required when it came to being a landlord. And as actors, directors, writers, and producers flocked to Hollywood from the Broadway stage, they needed good places to stay, ones that would increase their stature and send a message to the studios. “Does Mr. Niven have any referrals?”

“Mama, he doesn't need any. He has impeccable manners. He's British. He's in the horse business.”

“What does that mean?”

“Racehorses. Something or other.”

David returned to the dining room with Ruby.

“Mr. Niven, I understand you're looking for a place to stay.”

“I could not possibly burden you with my troubles, Mrs. Belzer.”

“What kind of horse business are you in?”

“I'm not actually in the horse business. I have friends who are, and I've been part of a rodeo show that traveled around the country a bit. The truth is, I'd like to get into acting.” He sat down. “Why aren't you all laughing?”

“Why would we?” Loretta stood and poured the coffee.

“Have you tried?” Gladys asked.

“I've been background here and there. I earn my keep on the golf course as a caddy, and I swab for the upper crust on the marina rentals in Del Rey and Monterey. Wherever the wind blows through sailcloth, you shall find me. I fully intend to keep working my odd jobs until I'm cast in something. I would pay you rent, of course.”

“As Loretta mentioned, we don't need it,” Sally blurted. “I mean, right, Mama? The pool house is empty anyway.”

“You're a hard worker?” Gladys asked.

“I'm afraid that's the one thing I'm good at. I'm a very determined young man, or so I like to think.”

“We do have a furnished pool house here on the property. You're welcome to it. Ruby serves breakfast at seven if you want eggs. If you sleep in—”

“I leave out the bread, and you can toast it,” Ruby told him.

“Sounds marvelous.”

“If you're serious about acting . . . ,” Loretta began.

“I am.”

“Alda and I leave for the studio at four thirty tomorrow morning. You're welcome to come, but we'll have to sneak you.”

“I've done some sneaking in my day.” He turned to Gladys. “Nothing you wouldn't approve of, Mrs. Belzer.”

“I haven't done anything this low-rent since I seduced my sister's piano teacher on her sixty-second birthday. The piano teacher, that is.”

“Get down,” Loretta said, laughing, as Alda threw a tarp over Niven as he lay on the floor of the back seat of Loretta's car.

All the way to the studio, Niven kept Loretta and Alda in tearful hysterics as he made the sounds of a hostage under the tarp. At first he whimpered, and then he began thumping the floor of the coupe as though he were trying to wrestle his way out of captivity.

“Shush back there,” Loretta commanded before she waved to the guard at Twentieth Century-Fox. The guard motioned Loretta and Alda through the gates, their big smiles protecting the stowaway.