Sheri Cobb South (2 page)

“No, no,” Frankie hastened to reassure him. “I’m in no hurry, Mr. Finch—no hurry at all!”

“Call me Herbert. Say, let’s go get a bite to eat, and we’ll talk about your future in the movies.” He gestured toward a sleek black Studebaker parked beside the curb.

* * * *

Mitch Gannon, observing this scene from a distance, hefted a dented footlocker onto his shoulder and tapped the shoulder of a freckle-faced porter very nearly his own age.

“Hey, who’s the suit?”

  The porter followed the direction of his gaze until he spotted Frankie and Finch. “Fellow talking to the doll in blue? Calls himself Herbert Finch. He hangs out at the station looking for slick chicks traveling solo.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “From what I hear tell, he promises to make ‘em famous, then once he gets ‘em alone—
fffft
!”

Mitch didn’t have to ask for a definition. “Not this one, he’s not!” He ground out the words through clenched teeth. “Flag me a taxi, will you? I’ll be right back.”

Without hesitation, he strode across the platform and seized Frankie by her blue-clad elbow.

“C’mon, honey, I’ve got a cab waiting.”

“But—but—” Her gaze fell on the trunk balanced on his shoulder. “Where’d
that
come from?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Ignoring her outraged protests, he picked up the largest of her bulging suitcases and set out for the nearest taxi stand.

Frankie cast an apologetic glance at the sputtering Herbert Finch. “Oh dear! I’m sorry—I’d better—where can I reach you?”

Finch made no reply, but muttered something under his breath and took off in the direction of a shapely young blonde farther down the platform.

“I hope you’re happy now,” Frankie scolded Mitch as she joined him at the waiting taxi. “I was just about to have lunch with a real live talent scout!”

“Tell it to Sweeney,” recommended Mitch, unrepentant. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”

“You mean like the kind you meet on trains?”

The porter cleared his throat. “Maybe it’s not my place to say, miss, but if you ask me, it’s a good thing your boyfriend came along when he did. That Mr. Finch, he’s a bad egg if there ever was one.”

“He’s not my—what do you mean, a bad egg?”

“He’s always hanging around the station watching the trains come in. When he sees a pretty girl traveling alone, he offers to make her a star.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Frankie asked. “Everyone could use a little help in starting off on a new career—except, of course, people who throw away perfectly good jobs to go following other people where they’re not needed or wanted,” she added with a darkling glance at Mitch.

Mitch acknowledged this verbal thrust with a grin, but the porter’s expression grew even more solemn. “Oh, he gets them started on a new career, all right, but not the one they came to California for.”

Frankie, bewildered, would have asked for an explanation, but Mitch threw open the back door of the taxi with a flourish.

“Madam, your chariot awaits.”

The taxi driver, waiting at the wheel with an expression of patent boredom on his weathered face, tapped the ash from his cigarette to the pavement below. “Where to, miss?”

Frankie hesitated, not knowing how to answer. Mitch regarded her with raised eyebrows and an infuriatingly smug smile. Once again it was the porter, stowing her suitcase into the taxi’s trunk, who came to her rescue.

“If I were you, miss, I’d try the Hollywood Studio Club on the corner of Lodi Place and Lexington. The rent’s cheap, and it includes two meals a day.” Sensing that these attractions were insufficient to tempt her, he added, “Myrna Loy used to live there, you know.” He slammed the trunk closed as if to emphasize the point.

“Oh, I loved her with William Powell in
The Thin Man
!” Frankie enthused. “All right, the Hollywood Studio Club it is. And thank you so much—you’ve been so very helpful!”

She pressed a dime into his palm, and bestowed upon him a smile so dazzling in its brilliance that the hapless porter was reduced to blushing incoherence. With a jaunty wave of one gloved hand, she swung herself into the back seat of the taxi and began straightening her skirt.

“Turn down the wattage before you electrocute the poor guy,” recommended Mitch, giving her a nudge.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sharing a taxi with you, remember?”

Frankie slid over grudgingly. “I thought you were getting off in Las Vegas.”

He shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

“But you had a job waiting!”

“Yeah, well, maybe I have a hankering to work in the movies.”

Frankie gave a disdainful sniff, and fixed her attention on the passing scenery. Mama, she knew, would be appalled at her lack of manners, and with good reason: Frankie shuddered to think what might have happened to her if she’d gotten into Herbert Finch’s car. Now, alone with her rescuer, she found herself strangely at a loss for words. She was more than a little embarrassed at having so easily fallen for what should have been an obvious trap, and chagrined to think that the first person she should meet on her big adventure probably thought she had no more sense than a—than a—

“Oh, look!” Frankie’s self-consciousness was banished by the sight of huge white letters spelling out HOLLYWOODLAND against the distant green hillside. “I’m really here! Somehow it didn’t seem real until now.”

Her enthusiasm was contagious, and Mitch entered into it wholeheartedly. She had apparently decided to forgive his officious behavior at the station, and as long as she was pelting the taxi driver with questions, she was unlikely to press him on certain subjects he would prefer to avoid. After all, what possible explanation could he give for chucking a perfectly good job and lighting out for California, all because of a girl he happened to meet on a train? Okay, so maybe he’d done more than meet her. Still, she wasn’t the first girl he’d ever met—ever kissed, either, for that matter. That was no reason for him to become her self-appointed protector. Besides, any amorous pursuit of Frankie Foster was doomed from the start. If ever a girl was the Marrying Kind, it was Miss Pure-as-the-driven-Snowy-Soap Flake Frances Foster, and he’d never met a girl less interested in marriage—except for maybe Barbara Malone, the toast of the A&M locker room, but Babs was a different class of female altogether.

So there was no logical explanation for his actions except that he was a complete lunatic—and yet, if he had it all to do over again, he would do the same thing.
Somebody
had to look after the girl and make sure she didn’t jump into the car with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who offered to make her a star. It might as well be him. And if her dreams of Hollywood stardom came crashing down around her, somebody would have to pick her up, dust her off, and put her back on a train to Georgia. He could do that, too; he’d always heard it was pretty country.

Chapter
2

Girl Crazy (1943)

Directed by Norman Taurog

Starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney

The Hollywood Studio Club proved to be a three-story building in the Mediterranean style, with a red tile roof and a painted frieze over the three arches that framed the front door. As she entered the foyer with Mitch at her heels, she was struck by the soaring ceiling with its exposed beams, the airy rattan furnishings interspersed with potted palms—and the sheer number of females. They were everywhere: draped over the rattan chairs, clustered around a prominently displayed bulletin board, flitting up and down the stairs. From somewhere in the distance came the tinny sounds of a radio playing “Anything Goes,” while the rhythmic thumping of footsteps overhead indicated that the next Ginger Rogers or Eleanor Powell hopeful was hard at work.

“Good afternoon,” Frankie addressed the sea of feminine faces regarding her with frank curiosity. Or was it still morning in California? After all, she was on Pacific Standard Time now. A fine first impression that would make, if her future housemates thought she couldn’t even tell time! “I’m Frances Foster. I’d like to see somebody about a room.”

A pert, freckle-faced redhead jerked a thumb in the direction of a carved double door at one end of the room. “You want to see Miss Williams, the directress. Through those doors and to your left. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.”

For the next few seconds, there was no sound but the clicking of Frankie’s high-heeled shoes on the tile floor
.
Just as the double doors closed behind her, a voice said in an audible whisper, “Maybe she’d better see someone about voice lessons while she’s at it. Did you ever
hear
such an accent?”

Thankfully, the resulting blow to Frankie’s confidence was short-lived. In spite of her formidable title, Miss Williams proved to be a motherly woman with stylishly coiffed graying hair and a twinkle in her eye. By the time Frankie re-emerged through the double doors some ten minutes later, she was the proud possessor of a room (well, half a room, really, since she would be sharing it with one of the other girls) at the bargain price of only fifteen dollars a week—more expensive than housing in Georgia, perhaps, but quite reasonable by Hollywood standards, and besides, it included two hot meals a day. Of course, the rules for residence were rather stringent, but since Frankie didn’t smoke or drink, and had no intention of entertaining gentleman callers in her room, she didn’t think compliance would be overly taxing.

The sight that met her eyes when she reached the foyer was enough to wipe the self-satisfied smile from her face. Mitch had dumped her suitcases just inside the door and now stood flexing his muscles for a gaggle of admiring females who “oohed” and “aahed” and vied for the privilege of squeezing his bulging biceps.

“Where did you say you played football?” one girl cooed. “UCLA?”

“Texas A & M,” Mitch corrected her.

“I have to attend a wrap party tomorrow night, and I don’t have a date,” purred a voluptuous brunette. “Would you like to escort me?”

“I’d only embarrass you,” Mitch demurred. “I don’t have a tuxedo.”

“Rent one at Brooks Brothers. You can pick me up at eight.”

“Ahem!” Frankie tapped her toes against the hardwood floor.

Mitch started guiltily and picked up her suitcases. “Here, let me get that for you.”

“No men are allowed beyond the first floor. So I guess this is goodbye.”

Frankie dropped the smaller of her two cases and held out her gloved hand. Mitch took it, but instead of the firm handshake she’d intended he gave her fingers a squeeze, making the gesture unexpectedly intimate. “Maybe not. After all, I know where to find you.”

“Here, I’ll help,” said the freckle-faced redhead, picking up Frankie’s case. “What room are you in?”

Frankie waited until they were halfway up the stairs, then asked, “Who was that—that
female
?”

“The one who tried to vamp your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my—”

“Her name is Pauline Moore, but we all call her Theda Baracuda behind her back.”

Frankie choked back a giggle. Her mother had seen the notorious Theda Bara in
Cleopatra
years ago, before Frankie was born. Mama had never forgotten it; in fact, that old silent film was responsible for her conviction that going to Hollywood was a girl’s first step on the road to hell.

“Yes sir, Pauline is the Studio Club’s own Will Rogers: she never met a man she didn’t like. By the way, everybody calls me Roxie, but my professional name is Roxanne Carr. Roxanne Carr, the Movie Star. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

Roxie paused before a closed door and tapped on the frame. “Knock, knock, anybody home?”

Receiving no reply, she turned the knob and, finding the door unlocked, pushed it open and snapped on the overhead light. Frankie found herself standing at the threshold of a small but well-proportioned room sparsely yet tastefully decorated in blue and white gingham and floral prints. The only fault to be found was the white framed twin beds, one of whose mattresses possessed a lump of remarkable size. Even as she focused on this flaw, the lump stirred and a flush-cheeked girl sat up, clutching the covers to her pajama-clad chest.

“Sorry, Kathleen, I didn’t know you were still in bed,” said Roxie, apparently unfazed by the discovery. “Hot date last night?”

“No, just not feeling well.” Kathleen raked her fingers through a fringe of blond curls worn like Norma Shearer’s in
Juliet
.

“Still? That’s, what, three days in a row. Maybe you’d better see a doctor.”

Kathleen shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I’ve brought you a new roommate,” Roxie said, dumping Frankie’s suitcase on the floor beside a mirrored dresser. “Kathleen Stuart, meet—?”

“Frances,” Frankie put in hastily. “Frances Foster, but my friends call me Frankie. Gosh, I’m sorry to disturb you like this.”

“No trouble,” Kathleen assured her, throwing back the covers. “I should have been up hours ago. I have a casting call first thing tomorrow.”

“That’s right, you’re reading for a part in
The Virgin Queen
, aren’t you?”

Kathleen nodded. “Gwyneth, lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth. It’s a costume picture,” she added unnecessarily, for Frankie’s benefit. “Not a very big role, but the kind that could get me noticed if I do a good job with it.”

Roxie kicked off her shoes and perched on the foot of the bed, patting the mattress as an invitation for Frankie to join her. “I hope you get the part,” she told Kathleen with a malicious gleam in her eye. “That would be one in the eye for Pauline!”

“Pauline is awfully good,” Kathleen said in the other girl’s defense. “Remember, she had a part in the last Clark Gable film.”

“As if she’d ever let us forget it! Two seconds on screen as a hat check girl!” Roxie made a derisive sound Mama would have called a snort. “I hope her scene ends up on the cutting room floor. It would serve her right!”

“She’d only get others,” Kathleen said, not without sympathy.

Roxie sighed. “You’re right, of course.”