Getting Garbo (6 page)

We're playing liar's poker, me and Killer, using the serial numbers on dollar bills for our bids. I've got two pair. But I claim I've got a full house—three sixes and two nines. He's chicken to call me, he folds. So he loses. He usually loses. I say it's because I can outbluff him using half my brain. He says it's because he has to suck up to the boss. He's a sore loser. Always was. I get a kick out of that.

“Got a light?” I put a Lucky between my lips. Killer slaps his pockets, finally comes up with a pack of matches from the commissary. “Where's my lighter?”

He holds the match steady for me. “You musta left it on the dressing table.”

“It's not there, you little
goniff.
You've got it in your pocket right now, don't you?

“For how much?”

He's ready to bet. Because he's ready to win. I can read this guy, I really can. “Maybe your scuzzy little blonde friend cadged it while in the throes of passion. If she swiped it, Kenny—”

“She didn't swipe nothin'—I never took my eyes off her!” He fires up his own cigarette. Luckies too, of course. He smokes what I smoke. “It'll turn up in the morning, sport, you'll see.”

Five nines, he says. I call him. He's really got 'em. For once he wins.

• • •

So now I'm driving home from Warners. Alone. Except for Jack Havoc. Sometimes it's hard to turn it off. I spend fourteen hours a day intensely trying to think, feel, and sound like him. Then I'm supposed to flip a switch and go back to being me. Can make you kind of schizzy sometimes. It's a problem I've been grappling with since I began acting.

During my radio days, I was known as “The Man of a Thousand Voices.” Sometimes I'd play three, four different parts in the same show. I'd get so deeply into each characterization, I'd almost forget who I really am. The only thing I can compare it to is when I was a little kid and I went to the Barnum & Bailey circus. They had this tiny little car drive out and stop in the center ring. Then one by one, a dozen people climbed out of the tiny car—and the last guy out was a giant. I never could figure out how they did it. There wasn't a tunnel hole under the car. Anyway, when I became an actor, that's how I felt. Like all those people were stuffed inside of me.

Driving myself home from the studio helps to make the transition. But there's still room for confusion. I'm driving exactly the kind of car Jack Havoc does. And I must be on automatic pilot because I'm barreling over Laurel Canyon, which takes me down onto the Sunset Strip. His part of town. Going past all the glitzy nightspots. I hear Bill Conrad's narrator's voice booming inside my head. “He travels the night. Searching for danger. Ready to extend a helping hand to those who seek justice.” Shit. It's like I'm living the opening titles of the series.

I turn on the T-Bird's radio. Miss Peggy Lee wailing away on “Hard-Hearted Hannah.” I should feel elated. Addie signed off. Skinned me. Took me for all I've got. She thinks. Peggy Lee belts away, “there was Hannah throwing water on a drowning man.” Music from the soundtrack of
Pete Kelly's Blues.
Jack Webb's flick. Another TV series guy out to make his mark in the movies. Gangway for Roy Darnell.

“I never knew what love could do, 'til I met you…” Miss Peggy doing the ballad now.

I switch it off.

Pull over to the curb.

Turn off the motor. The lights.

Hurting.

I'm divorced.

Failed at one of life's biggies.

Lost the person I thought was my best friend.

I look out the window. Surprised to see where I am. Kings Road. Parked in front of the house. Used to be our house. Now it's hers. Through the dining room window I catch a glimpse of Addie going down the hallway. She doesn't look my way. I watch until she disappears. I take a deep breath, try to swallow, but my throat is too constricted.

The thing about Jack Havoc is that, although he may be aching inside, he never cries.

I'm not Jack Havoc.

• • •

“What'll it be?” the bartender asks me.

“Martini.” I've wandered into a dark, seedy dive on Santa Monica Boulevard. Just fits my mood. Couldn't face going home yet to an empty rented house.

“Any special kinda martini?”

“Can you make a ‘West 76th Street'?”

“Hum a few bars for me.”

“Bombay gin, splash of ruby port, lime juice, grenadine, and one teardrop.”

It tickles him. “We're out of teardrops.”

“I'll supply my own if you can handle the rest.”

“Make it two,” she says. That's when I first notice her. Two stools over. I nod at the bartender and move over one stool. Jeannie, she says her name is. She's a TWA stewardess with quite a few miles on her. But built like a brick shithouse.

“Y'know who y'look like? Whosis, the TV guy, y'know the one—”

“Jack Havoc,” I tell her, “yeah, everybody says that, but I don't see it myself.”

“No, y'really do, really.” She giggles. “Bet you wish you had his money.”

“Money won't buy you love.”

“Sure it will, honey.”

I tell her my name is Fred and I sell insurance for State Farm and how is she fixed for life? She laughs like I'm Noel Coward dropping double entendres. That's the last word I get in. She's a chatterbox. I gave up listening three rounds ago. I think I'm feeling no pain. But I'm wrong. When I look over at her, she's grinning and gabbing and popping her eyes for comic emphasis. And then the strangest thing happens. Suddenly I'm hearing Addie's voice coming out of her face. It's like one of those badly dubbed Italian movies. But it's Addie, loud and clear.

“I hate you, Roy, from the top of your head to your toenails!”

“If you're not happy, then just get the fuck out! But don't forget to leave me all the money!”

“Know what you are? You're a tacky little turd playing an even tackier asshole on TV—it makes me sick to have people see me with you!”

Selected samples from Addie's extended play album of Best Hits. All custom designed to land way under the belt. No blow too low. How much can a man take before he hits back? I look down at my hands, both fists clenched, white knuckles, itching to smash into her face, go ahead,
do it,
stop that vicious mouth, rearrange her smarmy face, and—I lurch off my stool so abruptly it topples over. I don't bother to pick it up, just toss some bucks on the bar and bail before I lose it.

“Hey, honey,” I hear her call after me, “where y'runnin' to? I thought we're havin' fun.”

Now I'm on the street, looking for my car. Close call. Few more seconds and I would've detonated. Done something I'd really regret. Too much booze. Really bombed. Might look like an easy mark for some guys out to roll a drunk. Okay. C'mon, you bastards, give it your best shot! Let's rock and roll. But the street's deserted. All the store windows dark. Here's the parking lot, only a few cars left, no attendant. My trusty T-Bird in back under the trees next to a pickup truck. Almost pitch black when I walk between the two vehicles. I'm almost at my driver's door when I step on something lumpy that goes rolling and makes a glassy clink. I lose my balance and fall heavily against the side of my car.

A deep voice rumbles too close by. “Watch where you're goin', fucker!”

I see a bulky dark form go scurrying past me on all fours. Like a huge warthog. Going after the bottle that rolled away. “Come to baby,” he says and then he rises up, triumphantly holding a jug of cheap wine. Big guy. Grinning like the Cheshire cat. Two of his upper front teeth missing, clothes greasy, grungy beard. A wino. Without much wine left in his bottle, but he uncaps and finishes it.

“Good to the last drop,” he says.

“What the hell you doing down there?”

“Sorry if I spooked you. Just taking a snooze where it's quiet.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. Starting to unlock my car door.

“Hey, mister, spare some change? Haven't eaten all day.”

I dig in my pocket, give him all the coins I find there. He pockets them, but doesn't back off. Just smiles at me again, and he's close enough for me to get a good whiff of him. Wow. He smells like my dad did after he stumbled home from a toot. Ready to wail on little Roy.

And I know how it's going to end.

But we have to play out the hand.

“Look, pal,” he confides, “when I asked for spare change, I didn't mean it had to be
just
change. A couple bucks, maybe a five spot'd be real nice.”

“Sorry, gotta go now.”

“Don't be sorry, pal. You can spare it. What kinda car is this?”

“Just a T-Bird.”

“Looks expensive.” He reaches out to touch the roof with his fingers.

“Don't do that,” I smack his hand away. Lightly. “It spoils the finish.” He stares at me. No smile. So I smile at him. “There's oil on our fingers, all of us, and it—”

“—spoils the finish. Wouldn't want to do that.” Blocking me from opening the car door. Towering over me. “Ten bucks'd be just fine.”

It's his turn to smile again. Like he's scaring me. Like he's got me where he wants me. Like I'm at his mercy. That's when I hit him. A short right into his face. He falls back against the pickup truck. Raises up the bottle and swings it at me. I step inside, gut punch him. He drops the bottle. I scoop it up and then it all comes erupting out of me like a lava flow. I clobber him with his own jug until it shatters, then I keep punching, like I'm working out on the heavy bag at the gym, then I'm kicking him when he's down, stomping on him, letting it all out, what Dad deserved and what Addie has coming to her and—and he's not moving. Breathing but unconscious. On the ground, blood all over, and I've got to get out of here.

I rev up the T-Bird. Take off. Jack Havoc soaring away into the night. After defeating the forces of evil. Avenging all insults and cruelties perpetrated on Roy Darnell.

But after I've driven a mile or so, I start to come down off my high. I stop at a gas station in Beverly Hills and call Killer Lomax on the pay phone. Tell him about this wino back in the parking lot. Tell him to get over there, if the guy's still unconscious drive him over to the nearest emergency room, drop him at the curb, but tuck five hundred bucks in his pocket so they'll take care of him.

“I'll clean it up,” Killer assures me.

I can count on him.

I go home and sleep like a baby.

This is the tricky part, sneaking in under Mother's radar. Step number one, unlock the front door of the apartment. Step number two, slip off my shoes, tiptoe quickly in the darkness, across the living room and hope I don't trip over anything or make a sound that will attract her attention, because even though I can hear her snoring in the big bedroom, that doesn't mean Mother is asleep. Sometimes it's just a trap, and while I'm trying to reach my room, Mother will come out screaming like a banshee, “Reva-you-little-bitch-where-have-you-been-out-to-all-hours-with-your-trashy-loony-friends!” And sometimes she's swinging a stainless steel skillet and, lemme tell you, if the old gal dings you with that skillet, well, you really know it.

That's what it's like around here. She's still treating me as if I'm a seven-year-old, and you want to hear what
that
was like? I'll give you a couple of quickies, just so you'll get the flavor. I've always been what she calls “delicate,” which means to her I never eat enough and do that just to spite her, of course. She would spoon the food into my face, real rough and angry, and
she
would cry if I didn't swallow. Once she called the police on me and when they came, and I'm hysterical at the sight of them clumping up the stairs, and she goes, “
You
tell Reva she's gotta eat!” Mother didn't understand why the cops were mad at her (instead of me). So when I was eight, I told her that I couldn't take it anymore and I'm running away from home, figuring I'll go hide out for a while around the corner at Pearl's candy store, she likes me. And Mother, she says, “Okay by me if you want to leave—but those shoes. I paid for them so they're mine.” I took off my shoes and gave 'em to her and she opened the front door, but there was snow on the ground, so she won. Again.

What about my dad when all this stuff was going on? He'd either be out “trying to scrape together a living,” as Mother used to call it, or he'd be slouched in his chair in the living room with the
Daily News
in his lap and
The Cisco Kid
on TV, snoring away, because he was always exhausted by the time he came home from work. He was this warm-hearted guy who came from Russia when he was a teenager and was so proud to have married an American girl, even though she was ashamed of his accent and the fact that he was just an electrician. Once when I committed some major transgression, Mother told Daddy to spank me. He asked if I was guilty. I shrugged and said, “I dood it,” which was what Red Skelton said when he was the Mean Little Kid on TV. Daddy loved Red Skelton, and he started laughing and I got out of the spanking and Daddy would always say “I dood it” to me whenever I got in trouble. I sure miss him.

Mother says I was born a rabid movie fan, but actually she weaned me on weekly matinees at the Biltmore Theater on New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn, where we never missed the Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck tearjerkers. I asked her once why she cried at all the simpy kissy-kissy pictures, and she said, “Reva, I'm sorry you don't have those finer feelings, but maybe someday you'll understand.” Of course, when I wept buckets after Bambi's father got shot by the hunters in the forest, she got frosted and hollered at me, “Stop being so damn silly, it's just a dumb cartoon.”

Now I'm at the door to my room, snoring still coming nice and steady from her direction, and, final step, I ease the key into the padlock that guarantees me some privacy and you can imagine what a war it was to get her to agree to that one! But since I finished high school and started contributing to the household from my crappy little jobs, I insisted I was entitled to that much. There, the lock's open, I'm inside, sliding the dead bolt, safe again, at least until morning.

These days we live in an apartment house in Santa Monica that was built by Larry Parks, the guy who played Al Jolson in
The Jolson Story,
and he was a big star for a short while before he got blacklisted for being a communist or something. Anyway, he must not have been a very good communist, because he went into real estate and got rich constructing a bunch of apartment houses around L.A. Mother and I have the rear apartment on the first floor at this one and we get a big break on the rent because Mother is the resident manager. That means I get to schlep the garbage cans out to the curb once a week (I'm not too delicate for
that
chore), and Mother collects the rents for Larry Parks once a month. Imagine having a movie star—all right, an ex-movie star—for your landlord. I've never told him that I got his autograph years ago outside the Algonquin Hotel in New York when he and his wife, MGM musical star Betty Garrett, were in town for six hours en route to playing the London Palladium and that the Secret Six, me included, were the only collectors who got them. I mean, why complicate a business relationship?

Coming West a few years ago from New York was a good move for both of us. Mother's arthritis (the reason she drinks so much, she says, ha!) is much better in Southern California. It's better for me, too, living closer to the stars on a full-time basis, instead of being dependent on their occasional visits to the Big Apple. We're in a two-bedroom apartment, which is like Windsor Castle compared to what we had in Brooklyn. I wish my daddy could've lived to see it. But somehow my personal space hasn't changed much since I was a tiny kid. Still a closet-size room with one window facing a blank wall. Same Army cot with bargain basement headboard. The Nancy Drew decals I stuck on the redwood-stained bureau drawers—and got smacked for when they wouldn't come off—are still there. The undersized desk, where I did my grade-school homework and where I first wrote penny postcards to Hollywood for autographed pictures of the stars.

Under the window next to my bed there's a low bookcase made of wooden planks and cinder blocks, and my rows of autograph books are all lined up there. Plus several picture albums containing snapshots of various stars that I either took or bought from other collectors. The Romanoff's ashtray on my nightstand is comparatively new. I don't smoke, but I liberated the ashtray from a trash barrel behind the restaurant and I keep it overflowing with stubbed-out butts. Yeah, that's right. Cigarettes that once were in his mouth, then in his car ashtray, are now on my desk. Below what Mother calls the sacred altar.

Why does she have to make fun of everything? It's just a shelf with odds and ends on it. Memorabilia. Don'tcha love that word? It means that each object contains a memory, all related to Roy. Ticket stubs,
Broadway Playbills
, a scrapbook filled with clippings from newspapers and fan magazines, several scripts rescued from network and studio dumpsters, and a framed 8x10 glossy, autographed “To Reva, who was there for me from the beginning, with warmest affection, Roy Darnell.”

It's a funny thing, the star a fan picks to be her top favorite. Sometimes it seems like opposites attracting: the overweight chick from Bensonhurst who thinks the sun rises and sets on super-skinny Audrey Hepburn. Or maybe it's a similarity that's the pull: the tongue-tied boy who picks bashful Gary Cooper as his favorite. I also know a prissy gal from Tarzana who's the head of the national Olivia de Havilland fan club. Those are not hard to figure out. But what do you say about this refugee kid in New York who does imitations in his native Bulgarian accent of his favorite, Jerry Lewis? All a mystery of personal tastes and quirks, I guess. Some of the collectors are kinda fickle, changing favorites from year to year. Always looking for a new face. But that's not me, of course.

For me, it's always been Roy. Sometimes I've tried to figure out why. Sure, he's a good actor, handsome and all. And we have a history in common, like I feel we both started out together and he was sort of my discovery, though I can't ever say that to him. But from the beginning, just listening to him on the radio on
Let's Pretend,
there was this special connection. Like I could hear something, and then see something not everybody gets. I mean, even now when he's playing a tough guy (sort of elegant and all, but Jack Havoc does clobber Bad Guys in every episode), that's not the real Roy—inside of him, there's a gentle little boy who's been hurt, but he keeps plugging away. That's the essential Roy. I can see it in his eyes—in close-ups on the screen, or sometimes the way he smiles at me when I come up to him, particularly if it's somewhere he didn't expect me to find him.

In the beginning, Mother thought my collecting autographs was cute. But then one of the neighbors in Brooklyn told her it was strange, and she always worries what people think, so Mother's been ragging on me ever since. Running wild in the streets. That's what she calls it. And don't get her started on the subject of Roy. Did I mention that Mother became an astrology nut, really studied up on the stuff, worked out these involved mathematical charts where Cancer afflicts Aries and Mars is stepping on Venus with things ascending and descending all over the place. She got hold of Roy's sun sign and even his exact time of birth from an astrology magazine and she ran a comparative chart on me, and then she points at this mumbo-jumbo and says it's proof positive that Roy's very bad for me. On a permanent, long-term basis.

“He represents great peril, you must stay as far away from him as possible,” she says, as if I don't get the idea that she's stacked the deck to make it come out the way she wants: quit collecting. I hate being manipulated.

Surrounding the framed glossy of Roy on my bookshelf is a series of smaller candid snapshots of me and Roy smiling together in front of various celebrated New York and Hollywood watering holes. In winter snows and sweltering heat waves. Rain and shine. Point being that us collectors, we're the way the Pony Express used to be, like the U.S. Post Office used to claim to be, like nothing could stop us.

Anyhow, that's how the Secret Six were back in New York.

• • •

I was the youngest member of the Group (that's what the Secret Six called ourselves), but I was used to that. I was always the youngest and smallest in any group I belonged to. The last to be chosen for any team, the last girl in my junior high school class who still hadn't gotten her period. You get the idea. But at least I was smart and proved my worth to the Secret Six by solving the problem of how to get into radio shows whenever we wanted to.

Back then there were a lot of star-studded radio shows emanating from New York that had audiences,
The Fred Allen Show,
Cavalcade of America,
Kraft Music Hall,
The Kate Smith Show
and
Theater Guild of the Air,
not to mention the start of “live” TV shows like
Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater.
You needed tickets to get in, of course, and the collectors used to canvass the line before the show and ask if anybody had extra tickets, but that was uncertain and a bother.

What I realized was that while the tickets were different colors from week to week, there weren't that many different colors, and by checking the trash barrels behind the studios we could find used discards and soon we all carried a rainbow of CBS and NBC tickets in our pockets. Whatever color they were looking for, we had. We'd get in line with everybody else and when they finally let in the crowd it was always a last minute rush so when you reached the usher at the door who was collecting the tickets, you'd just give him the right color ticket and he never had time or inclination to read it. You're probably thinking that's what got me into the Secret Six, but actually I came up with that innovation after I was already a member.

Want to hear about the way I got to join? It's kind of an interesting story. One Saturday afternoon on one of those sticky hot summer days, I'd been waiting with the hordes at the stage entrance to the Roxy Theater for Abbott & Costello, who were appearing on stage in person. They never came out, but a flunky emerged to collect autograph books so the comedians could sign them inside. None of the Secret Six were there; you wouldn't catch them at a mob scene like that. But from eavesdropping on their conversations outside Sardi's and “21,” I was already aware of their rule that you have to see 'em sign for it to count, and I also was scared to let my shiny new autograph book out of my hands because I might not get it back. So I didn't toss my book in with the others going inside and I walked off instead. It was almost time for the end of the matinee performance of
Streetcar
and I was only a few blocks away. The guy Roy Darnell was understudying had the flu, so Roy was going on and I could say hello when he came out.

It was still a little early as I got to the Ethel Barrymore Theater. When I stepped out of the baking sun into the shadowy shelter of the stage door alley, there was one other person there. A mulatto girl with frizzy blonde-streaked hair, wearing dungarees and a black blouse. She was four, five years older than me, and she was perched on an orange crate, leaning back against the wall near the stage door. She was smoking a cigarette and softly singing Teresa Brewer's hit song that you heard everywhere then: “Dum-dee-dum-dee-daddee-dum, all I want is loving you and music, music, music…” When she saw me, she stopped singing and offered me a cigarette. I told her I'd quit. “More like y'forgot t'start, right, missy?” She had a real nice smile. You had to smile back at her.

Her name was Tamar and she asked me what I was doing there. Told her I was an autograph collector and that tickled her some more. She wanted me to show her my book and when she saw I had John Garfield and Lena Horne, that really kayoed her. Not that she didn't see stars all the time herself. Tamar was the assistant wardrobe mistress on
Streetcar
and she was out here grabbing a smoke before going back in to collect the costumes after the performance.

“Just gotta keep track of 'em,” she explained. “Hardly ever wash them clothes, them actors play some pretty gamy characters, know what I mean?”