Stars Over Sunset Boulevard (13 page)

May 1939

T
he soldiers in tattered and dirty uniforms lay in row after row on the back Forty. Some raised an arm in supplication as they called out, and some lay still as if asleep or dead. Some weren't men at all, but rather dummies dressed in military garb. When one of these raised an arm, it was because a living man next to it was working a lever with one hand while reaching out for Scarlett O'Hara with the other as she walked through a train yard strewn with wounded and defeated Confederates.

A camera attached to a construction crane borrowed from the Long Beach shipyard was pulled slowly back, more and more and more, as the lens took in the nearly one thousand extras sent over from Central Casting. Audrey had heard Selznick wanted fifteen hundred men, and was sent only nine hundred and seventy-seven because of a pay dispute, hence the nearly seven hundred dummies.

The May sun was bright and brassy, and Audrey blotted
away the sweat on her neck with a tissue. She didn't mind being out in the heat of the day. She was glad that filming had picked up to such a frenetic pace that she and several other secretaries in the pool had been tasked with helping the team of assistant directors working six days a week to finish shooting on time. Victor Fleming had collapsed from exhaustion a few weeks earlier and had only recently returned. In his absence a third director, Sam Wood, had been brought in, and because the completion date was just a month way, he had stayed on. Scenes were being shot simultaneously all over the studio grounds and everyone was working ten-hour days, six days a week.

Audrey watched Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara continue her search for Dr. Meade. She imagined herself in the drab calico dress, wearing a straw hat from happier days, picking her way through a thousand injured soldiers who embodied a thousand crushed dreams. She closed her eyes and could very nearly sense the hands of the dying reaching out to her, to speak of what they had lost.

The sensation was not foreign to her. The past month had been one long reminder that she was surrounded by mementos of what might have been or used to be. Her strained friendship with Bert had been the hardest development to make sense of. For the past five years he had been her closest friend and confidant. Losing that hat had put a wedge between them that she could not budge. She had apologized repeatedly, even though she could not remember having left with it that night. And since it hadn't turned up anywhere outside wardrobe, it seemed more likely to her that it had been lost in the labyrinth of costume shelves. Bert was no longer angry with her, but he seemed distant, as if he'd decided she could not be trusted and he needed to create a wall of protection from her. Bert had been the one
constant in her life that had nothing to do with her acting career, or hoped-for second chances or providential assignations. He was just a kind, ordinary man who made her believe ordinary happiness was possible. She had known for quite a while that he was a bit infatuated with her, but she had always been careful not to encourage him in that way. She valued his companionship too much to mess it up with romance. Besides, she did not deserve a man like Bert. But she did deserve his friendship, didn't she? And she missed him. She wished they hadn't come back to the wardrobe building to soak themselves in Manhattans that night. If they had just gone to a club, the hat never would have turned up missing, Bert wouldn't have almost lost his job, and she'd still feel she mattered to him.

The junior director, one of eight who was helping to manage the hundreds of extras and whom she was assisting that day, called her name. Audrey was yanked out of her reverie.

“Take these hats back to the costume tent and have wardrobe dirty them up, for God's sake. These men have been in war, not a garden party.”

Audrey took the offered basket of too-clean uniform hats and headed over to one of six costume tents set up on the dirt just outside the make-believe train yard. Bert was standing behind a long table of extra pants, shirts, and tattered jackets as she neared the first tent. She could have gone to one of the other wardrobe assistants but she headed for Bert. He had been tagging clothes but he looked up as she came closer. She thought she detected a smidgeon of old desire in his eyes.

“Hello, Bert.”

He smiled cordially as he returned the greeting. “So, how are you?”

“All right.” She handed him the box. “I've been instructed to tell you these aren't dirty enough. Do you have any others? Dirtier ones?”

Bert looked inside the box. “All the other hats have been assigned out.” He looked up at her. “If you want to come back in a little bit I can do something on the fly.”

She smiled. “You going to take them out behind the tent and throw them on the ground and trample them?”

He grinned back. “I am.”

“Let's go, then. It sounds like fun.”

A few minutes later, the hats had been tossed onto the ground and Audrey kicked at the brims while Bert batted them with the flat edge of a shovel.

“You still mad at me?' she asked.

“I was never mad at you, Audrey. I was mad at myself. Mad that I got so stinking drunk I couldn't even remember what happened.”

She ground a brim with the heel of her shoe. “That was my fault, too.”

“Nobody forced me to drink, Audrey. All you did was pour.”

They were quiet as they worked to ruin the hats.

“But you're different around me now.”

He held the shovel over a hat and looked at her. “I was going to say the same thing.”

“Are we changing, Bert?”

“Changing into what?”

She couldn't explain it. She knew only that he was drifting from her and the thought saddened her. “I don't know.”

Bert whacked a hat and little clouds of dust swirled about it. “Do you still want it, Audrey? Do you still want to be a star?”

Vince had asked her the same thing a few days earlier. He was still eager to help her but he had seemed in need of confirmation that she still wanted to do it her way, relying on chance for her luck to change.

Tears threatened to spill, and she kicked the hat she had dirtied over to Bert so that he could pound it with the shovel. “I don't know how to want anything else.”

•   •   •

That night Violet made fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and succotash for dinner. Several nights had passed since they had eaten together, and Audrey basked in the comforting taste of home-style cooking and her roommate's company.

“Which set were you on today?” Violet asked. “Was it a good day?”

Audrey forked some of the buttered vegetables into her mouth. “I was on the pull-back shot from eight until six. It was a long, hot day. But I think Fleming got what he wanted. I saw Bert.”

Violet looked up from her plate. “Did you?”

“I haven't seen him much lately. I was thinking maybe he hadn't forgiven me for losing that hat.”

Violet slid her knife back into the chicken breast. “Oh. That was more than a month ago. I'm sure he's gotten over it.”

“I suppose he has. I don't know. He seems different these days.”

Violet popped the piece of chicken into her mouth. “Did he tell you he's fixing up an old truck he bought?”

“A truck? To drive?”

“When he's done with it, he said he'll come by the bungalow in the mornings on his way to work and take us home
at the end of the day. He said he doesn't like it that you and I have to ride the streetcar and bus after dark. Isn't that sweet?”

It seemed odd to Audrey for Violet to tell her something about Bert that she didn't already know. “So, when did he tell you this?”

Violet waved her hand to shoo away any notion that she'd learned this news via some kind of complex situation. “Oh, we just grabbed a sandwich at Newberry's on Sunday night after he got back from his mother's in Santa Barbara. You were out.”

“Oh?”

“He's keeping it at a friend's place while he works on it on weekends. Won't it be nice not to have to ride the bus at night? Bert says it won't be any trouble to pick us up. It's on his way.”

Audrey swirled a lima bean in a trail of butter. “It will be very nice, but we're not on his way. He's just being kind. As always.”

Violet chewed her food and then swallowed, a perplexed look on her face. “He said he'd be happy to do it.”

“Then that will be great, I guess.”

A few minutes of silence passed between them.

“You know, Audrey,” Violet said, “I've been thinking about what you said when we were at the Pig'n Whistle last month. About how at the coffee shop all those years ago you felt as if your mother somehow orchestrated that event from heaven. It seemed fanciful to me at first, but the more I've thought about it, the more I think maybe you're right. You were discovered through providential timing the first time. Who says it can't happen again that way?”

Audrey couldn't remember the last time someone had affirmed the feeling she had deep inside that her path wasn't
going to be like everyone else's. Perhaps no one ever had. “You don't know how wonderful it is to hear you say that. The few people who know what I really want think I'm hopelessly unrealistic. Well, Bert doesn't, I guess. He just thinks I gave up too soon on the conventional way.”

Violet considered this for a moment. “Yes, well, he wasn't around when you were discovered the first time, was he?”

Audrey laughed lightly. “No. He was still living at home then.”

“There you go.”

“I don't want to be known as the has-been who auditions for roles and never gets a part. I couldn't handle that, Vi. I don't want to be the one who wants. I want to be the one who is wanted.”

Violet reached across the table to squeeze her arm in a comforting gesture of solidarity. “Of course you do.”

June 1939

K
nown simply as the Paddock, it was built to represent the most desolate corner of battle-weary Tara. The somber, decidedly monochromatic set was the backdrop for the scene in which Scarlett O'Hara would finally get the impassioned kiss from Ashley Wilkes that she'd always wanted. The director's instructions to Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard were that they were to make it seem, for just a fragment of time, as though reckless escape was all that was left to them. But then Ashley, pulling himself away from Scarlett, was to take a firmer hold of the one true thing that ruined survivors of war could still cling to: He was to remind Scarlett that honor still belonged to them. Not only that, but Tara, though beaten down and drained of its beauty, was still hers as well. Ashley was to tell Scarlett that she loved Tara more than him, though she may not know it.

It was a difficult, emotionally electrified scene, and it
was not the first time Violet and Miss Myrick had stood just off to the side to watch it being shot. The same scene had been attempted nearly a month earlier. Countless takes had been made over a twelve-hour day, but technical difficulties and Mr. Howard's inability to consistently deliver Ashley's lines resulted in not even one take that was good enough for the production room.

Today, on the twenty-fourth of June, with mere days left to finish shooting the picture, the Paddock was again ready for the Technicolor cameras. Violet and Miss Myrick arrived after the morning rehearsal and the recording of the “wild tracks”—the sounds of the set when it's quiet and also when there's activity, but with no accompanying image. Violet had been told that background sounds shifted as the camera moved and even the light fixtures emitted sound. The wild tracks would help the sound editor make sense of the ambient noise during post-filming editing.

Finally, a bit before three in the afternoon, the first of twenty-seven takes of the Paddock scene was shot. Miss Myrick wasn't needed after the first three or four, and she dismissed Violet to take care of a few memos. But before Violet headed back to the main lot, Miss Myrick handed her a piece of paper with just one paragraph typed in its center.

“I want you to come with me to this.” Miss Myrick nodded at the piece of paper. “See you tomorrow.” Then she turned to a group of set dressers who needed her opinion on something.

Violet read the piece of paper in her hand:

In gratitude for your suffering efforts and courtesy during the Long Siege of Atlanta, and in celebration of the conclusion of the damned thing, we request the pleasure of your company at a little party to be
given on Stage 5 immediately after Tuesday's shooting, June 27th.

It was signed by Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, and Victor Fleming.

Violet had not been expecting an invitation to the cast party, a festive event after a movie's principal filming that no one from the secretary pool usually went to. Violet wondered if wardrobe would be invited and if Bert would be there. Her heart warmed at the thought that perhaps he would be told he could come as well.

Bert had begun to occupy Violet's every spare mental moment. She could not chase him away from her thoughts, nor did she want to. She was falling for him, harder than she had ever fallen for anyone. The long-ago fascination she'd had for Franklin seemed childish and shallow in comparison, and she could not help but nourish the pull she felt toward Bert, especially after he had opened up to her.

Violet had invited Bert over for ham and redeye gravy a few nights earlier, when Audrey had been at a movie Violet hadn't wanted to see. She had felt a bit guilty about inviting him, knowing he was most likely expecting Audrey to be there, too. It wasn't as if she'd said Audrey would be there when she knew she wouldn't be; she just didn't say it would be the two of them. He had appeared to be only momentarily distracted by Audrey's absence. Violet had asked him to tell her more about the birds he loved and his family, since she could tell these were both close to his heart—the place she wanted to be. She had learned that Bert was the oldest in his family, that his two younger sisters were eighteen and nineteen. She also learned that Bert's father, Henry, had seen such horrible things in the Great War that when he came home after the war ended, he had
to find something beautiful to spend his spare thoughts on so that his mind wouldn't return to visions of the men he had killed or the comrades he had seen blown to bits.

“I don't think he'd looked at birds much before then, or even thought about them,” Bert had said. “But he'd spent hours watching them from his hospital window while he recovered from shrapnel injuries. And I guess when you're lying in a bed after months of marching and shooting other men and watching friends die, you look for any way you can to reconnect with the person you were before you put on an Army uniform. The birds he saw from that hospital window in Germany were the same ones he saw in California. At least that's how they looked to him. And that had astonished him. He told me it helped him begin to heal, and not just from his physical wounds.”

Violet had offered Bert a second helping of ham, and he'd continued.

“I was six when my father finally came home from the war. He got his teaching job back at the high school, and he started watching sandpipers on the beach and cormorants on the cliffs above the sea and the swallows that come to the mission at San Juan Capistrano every year. Everywhere he went, he took me with him. I grew up seeing magic in the way birds live and move and communicate with each other, because he saw it. When I was thirteen, Dad and I went on a bird-watching trip to Europe, so he could make peace with the places he had been to and what he'd had to do there, and he wanted me to be a part of it. He had a heart attack a few months after I graduated from high school. His doctor thought it was caused by shrapnel that over the years had slowly traveled to his heart. I'd just started a job as an errand boy at MGM studios in Hollywood when I got the telegram from my mother.”

Tears had sprung to Violet's eyes when he'd shared this.

The studio job hadn't been what Bert wanted to do with the rest of his life, but it had been a place to begin, he'd said. Over a dessert of lemon chiffon pie, Bert had shared with Violet something he hadn't told anyone else yet. Not even Audrey. He'd recently decided he wanted to go to college and study ornithology and then travel to faraway places to photograph birds for professional field guides.

“I don't know how or when I will make it happen,” he'd said. “College is expensive, and working eight hours a day doesn't leave me with much free time. But it's always there in the back of my mind. I've always had a longing to do something with my camera besides just take pictures for myself, and I'd like to honor my dad somehow for what he did and who he was to me.”

It had been a tender, revealing moment, and Violet had replayed it over and over in her mind because he had shared this new idea of his with no one else but her.

It felt as if he'd kissed her. Passionately.

Violet now walked back to the Mansion, contemplating how her workday would change when Miss Myrick returned to Georgia. She wouldn't be seeing Bert during the day anymore unless it was at the commissary at lunch-time. In fact, nothing about her day would seem very exciting after filming ended and Miss Myrick went home.

The secretary pool was quiet—it was a Saturday, and only those directly involved with the frantic effort to film the last few scenes had been called in to work, plus a few who were already tackling a mountain of correspondence for Selznick's next film,
Rebecca
. Audrey was at her station, typing at a gentle pace. Her hair was pulled into a side ponytail that fell serenely across one shoulder. Her dress, blue polka-dot voile with white trim, drew attention to her perfectly shaped body
with a subtlety that seemed childlike and innocent. Violet walked past her own desk and headed for Audrey's with the note about the wrap party still in her hand.

“Shooting all done?” Audrey said effortlessly. She was in a good mood.

“They're still at it. It's the Paddock scene. Again. But they don't need Miss Myrick anymore today.”

Audrey typed in silence for a few seconds; then she sensed that Violet was lingering. She looked up from her dictation. “Is that something you need help with?” She nodded to the invitation.

Violet looked down at the piece of paper. “Oh. No. Miss Myrick wants me to come to the wrap party on Tuesday.”

“Lucky you,” Audrey said, with no detectable hint of envy.

“Think I should go?”

Audrey continued to tap away at the keys. “Of course you should. You've spent a lot of long hours on the—what is it called there?—the damned thing.”

“So have you.”

Audrey smiled. “Don't you worry about me, Vi. You go for both of us.”

“Want me to see if I can invite you, too?”

“I've actually got plans for Tuesday night.”

“A date?” Violet asked.

Audrey tipped her head to the side as she typed. “I wouldn't exactly call it a date.” But she grinned as she said it.

“With Vince?”

At the mention of the name, Audrey's hands fell silent and she looked up in surprise. “Vince?” she echoed with a laugh, clearly waiting for Violet to explain how she'd come up with that name.

“I . . . I heard you taking calls from him a while back,” Violet stammered, heat rising to her cheeks, as it was obvious she'd made a wrong assumption. “I wasn't trying to listen to you. The bungalow is quiet at night. I just heard you say his name a couple times.”

Audrey's amused grin deepened. “Vince is just a friend, Violet. We met ages ago when I was at MGM. He works in publicity at Paramount now. He knows everybody in this business. But he's engaged to be married, if you must know. He's helping me get connected to someone who might be able to change things around for me—that's all.” Audrey commenced typing again, but she still smiled, at the vision, no doubt, of her friend Vince being romantically interested in her.

“Oh,” Violet said numbly.

“Dear Violet, you do brighten my days.” Audrey shook her head. “Vince has stealthily put me in contact with someone who scouts for Warner and that's who I am meeting on Tuesday. They're looking to groom some new talent. I've been working on getting this meeting for a long while. I had to do it my way and that takes longer.”

“Your way?”

“I had to wait for this man to ask
me
for the meeting, of course.”

Violet immediately pictured Audrey at soirees and parties where this man had been present. In her mind's eye, she saw Audrey subtly positioning herself so that Providence—in the form of her mother—could persuade him to look Audrey's way. And perhaps he said to the person next to him,
“Who is that over there with Vince?”

She pictured that man walking over to Audrey and saying something like,
“Have we met before?”
and
Audrey, pretending she didn't know who he was, responding with,
“I don't believe so. I'm Audrey Duvall.”

The man surely would be charmed by Audrey's loveliness and appeal; all men were. Violet wondered if Audrey truly knew how devastatingly beautiful she was. Or if she had considered that this man she would be meeting on Tuesday might have something on his mind other than Audrey's future as a movie star.

“But . . . but does this man think it's a date?” Violet asked tentatively.

Audrey's hands fell still over the keys as she looked up. “Do you think that's the only reason a man like that would ask me out to dinner?”

Violet stiffened. “No. That's not . . . I didn't mean it that way. I just meant—”

“You think I let him come up to me out of the blue and ask me to dinner with absolutely no context at all for it? You think I haven't had him wanting to find a way to get me interested in what's happening at Warner? That I haven't been in complete control of this from the moment he introduced himself to me?”

“Audrey, I . . .” But Violet could not finish her thought.

“What? What are you trying to say?”

“You are just so beautiful and elegant and alluring. Men can be so stupid. And selfish.”

Audrey's laugh was musical this time, and she reached out a hand to pat Violet's arm. “It's sweet of you to worry about me. But I promise you that I'm not naïve about any of this, Violet. And I don't want you to ever be naïve about it, either.” Audrey leaned forward in her chair and locked her gaze onto Violet's. “Don't ever sleep with a man to get what you want, because you won't get it. He will, but you
won't. You get what you want by being smart with what you have, not by giving away what you have. Promise me you won't forget I told you this.”

Violet was stunned for a moment by Audrey's profoundly fraternal devotion toward her.

“So you won't forget?” Audrey pressed.

Violet promised she would not give away what she had.