Tell-All (17 page)

From behind their thin scrim of red gore, the diamonds and sapphires watch, glinting coldly. Their multitude of polished, flashing facets reflect infinite versions of Miss Kathie’s demise and Webster’s unbearable heartbreak. The emeralds and rubies bear detached, timeless, eternal witness to the drama and folly of mere humankind. The Webster character looks down; seeing blood on his
Rolex
wristwatch, he hurriedly wipes the timepiece on Miss Kathie’s dress, then presses the dial to his ear to listen for a tick.

Reading from the
Love Slave
manuscript, Terry says, “ ‘The end.’ ”

Professional gossip
Elsa Maxwell
once said, “All biographies are an assemblage of untruths.” A beat later, adding, “So are all
autobiographies.”

The critics were willing to forgive
Lillian Hellman
a few factual inaccuracies concerning the
Second World War
. As presented here, this was history—but better. It might not be the actual war, but this was the war we wished we’d fought. For that, it was brilliant, dense and meaty, with
Maria Montez
slitting the throat of
Lou Costello
. After that,
Bob Hope
tap-dancing his signature shim-sham step through a field of live land mines.

Compared to the opening night of
Unconditional Surrender
, no doughboy crouched in the trenches nor GI in a tank turret ever shook with as much fear as my Miss Kathie felt stepping out on that stage. She made a ready target from every seat in the house. Dancing and singing, she was a
sitting duck. Each note or kick step could easily be her last, and who would notice amidst the barrage of fake bullets and mortar shells that rocked the theater that night? Any wily assassin could squeeze off a fatal shot and make his escape while the theatergoers applauded Miss Kathie’s bursting skull or chest, thinking the death blow was merely a very effective special effect. Mistaking her spectacular public murder for simply a plot point in Lilly Hellman’s epic saga.

So Miss Kathie danced. She occupied every inch of the set as if her life depended on it, constantly dodging and evading any single location on the stage, climbing to the forecastle of a battleship, then diving into the warm waves of the
Pacific Ocean
, the lyric of an
Arthur Freed
song bubbling up through the water, and Miss Kathie breaking the azure surface a moment later, still holding the same
Harold Arlen
note.

It was terror that invested her performance with such energy, such verve, spurring the best Miss Kathie had given her audience in decades. Creating an evening which people would recall for the remainder of their lives. Imbuing Miss Kathie with a kinetic vitality which had been too long absent. Peppered throughout the audience we see
Senator Phelps Russell Warner
seated beside his latest wife. We see
Paco Esposito
in the company of industry sexpot
Anita Page
. Myself, I sit with
Terrence Terry
. In fact, the only empty seat in the house is beside the haggard
Webster Carlton Westward III
, where he’s lovingly placed the massive armload of red roses he, no doubt, intends to present during the curtain calls. A bouquet large enough to conceal a tommy gun or rifle. The barrel perhaps equipped with a silencer, although such a precaution would be wholly unnecessary as deafening Japanese Zeros dive-bomb the American forces at
Pearl Harbor
.

Tonight’s performance amounted to nothing less than a battle for her identity. This, the constant creation of herself. This strutting and bellowing, a struggle to keep herself in the world, to not be replaced by another’s version, the way food is digested, the way a tree’s dead carcass becomes fuel or furniture. In her high stepping, Miss Kathie endlessly blared proof of her human existence. In her blurred
Bombershay
steps here was a fragile organism doing its most to effect the environment surrounding it and postponing decomposition as long as possible.

Framed in that spotlight, we watched an infant shrieking for a breast to suckle. There was a zebra or rabbit screaming as wolves tore it to pieces.

This wasn’t any mere song and dance; here was a bold, blaring declaration howling itself into the empty face of death.

Before us strutted something more than Miss Kathie’s past characters:
Mrs. Gunga Din
or
Mrs. Hunchback of Notre Dame
or
Mrs. Last of the Mohicans
.

No one except myself and
Terrence Terry
would take note of the sweat drenching my Miss Kathie. Or notice the twitching, nervous way her eyes rattled in their attempt to watch every seat in the orchestra and balcony. For once, the critics weren’t her worst fear, not
Frank S. Nugent
of the
New York Times
nor
Howard Barnes
of the
New York Herald Tribune
nor
Robert Garland
of the
New York American
.

Jack Grant
of
Screen Book
,
Gladys Hall
and
Katherine Albert
of
Modern Screen
magazine,
Harrison Carroll
of the
Los Angeles Herald Express
, a legion of critics take rapturous notes, racking their brains for additional superlatives. Also, columnists
Sheilah Graham
and
Earl Wilson
, a group that any other show, any other night would constitute what
Dorothy
Kilgallen
calls “a jury of her sneers,” this night those sourpusses would clamor with praise.

In my seat, I jot my own notes, making a record of this triumph. Tonight, not only Miss Kathie’s triumph and Lilly Hellman’s, but my own personal victory; the sensation feels as if I’ve seen my own crippled child begin to walk.

At my elbow, Terry whispers that producer
Dick Castle
telephoned, already angling for the film rights. Looking pointedly at my feet tapping along to the music, he smiles and whispers, “Who died and made you
Eleanor Powell?”
His own tense hands carry a constant stream of colorful
Jordan almonds
from a small paper sack to his mouth.

Onstage, my Miss Kathie belts out another surefire gold-record hit, wrapping herself in the smoldering, snapping flag of the
USS
Arizona
. Throwing herself from stage left to stage right she displays the panicked, manic struggle of an animal caught in a trap. Or a butterfly snared in a spider’s web. Spangles flashing, vivid eye shadow, her hair colored and sculpted beyond the lurid dreams of any peacock, the smile she displays is nothing more than a jaws-open, teeth-snarling rictus spasming in outrage against the dying light. Bug-eyed in her forced enthusiasm, Miss Kathie thrashes through each production number, a frenzied, vicious, frenetic denial of impending death.

Her every gesture wards away an unseen attacker, keeping the invisible at bay. Her every freeze, drop, drag and slide constitutes a fight, sidestep, evasion of her imminent doom. Pounding the boards, my Miss Kathie spins as a flapping, squawking, frantic dervish begging for another hour of life. So upbeat, so animated and alive in this moment because death looms so close.

Backstage, desperate for an encore he knows the audience
will demand,
Dore Schary
already plans to A-bomb
Nagasaki
. For a second and third encore, he’s chosen
Tokyo
and
Yokohama
.

According to
Walter Winchell
, the entire
Second World War
was just an encore to the first.

Onstage, Miss Kathie executes a violent, furious
Buffalo
step, transitioning to a
Suzy Q
even as
Manchuria
falls.
Hong Kong
and
Malaysia
topple.
Mickey Rooney
as
Ho Chi Minh
leads the
Viet Minh
into battle. The
Doolittle Raid
rains fire on
Nora Bayes
.

And in the seat next to me,
Terrence Terry
clutches at his throat with both hands and slides, lifeless, to the floor.

For this next scene, we open with a booming, thundering chord from a pipe organ. The chord continues, joining the melody of
Felix Mendelssohn
’s Wedding March. As the scene takes shape, we see my Miss Kathie garbed in a wedding gown, standing in a small room dominated by a large stained-glass window. Beyond an open doorway, we can make out the arched, cavernous interior of a cathedral where row upon row of people line the pews.

A small constellation of stylists orbit Miss Kathie.
Sydney Guilaroff
and
M. La Barbe
tuck away stray hairs, patting and smoothing the sides of Miss Kathie’s pristine updo.
Max Factor
dabs the finishing touches on her makeup. My position is not that of a bridesmaid or flower girl. I am not a formal member of the wedding party, but I shake out Miss Kathie’s train and spread its full length. At the back of the church I tell her to smile, and slip my finger between her
lips to scratch a smear of lipstick off one upper incisor. I toss the veil over her head and ask if she’s certain she wants to do this.

Her violet eyes gleaming behind the haze of Belgian lace, vivid as flowers under a layer of hoarfrost, Miss Kathie says,
“C’est la vie.”

She says, “That’s Russian talk for ‘I do.’ ”

In an impulsive gesture I lift her veil and lean forward, putting my lips to her powdered cheek. There, the taste of
Mitsouko
perfume and the dust of talc meet my mouth. Ducking my head and twisting my face away, I sneeze.

My darling Miss Kathie says,
“Ich liebe dich.”
Adding, “That’s how the French say, ‘Gesundheit.’ ”

Standing near us, donning a dove gray morning coat,
Lillian Hellman
snaps her fingers—one snap, two snaps, three snaps—and jerks her head toward the pews filled with guests. Lilly offers her arm and links it through Miss Kathie’s, guiding her to the head of the church’s center aisle. My Miss Kathie’s arms, garbed in white, elbow-length gloves, her gloved hands clasp a bouquet of white roses, freesia and snowdrops.
The Vienna Boys Choir
sings
“Some Enchanted Evening.” Marian Anderson
sings
“I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No.”
The
Sammy Kaye Orchestra
plays
“Green-sleeves”
as the shining satin and white lace of Miss Kathie drifts a step, drifts a step, drifts another step away, leaving me. Arm in arm with Lilly, she stalks closer to the altar, where
Fanny Brice
stands as the matron of honor.
Louis B. Mayer
waits to officiate. A bower arches above them, twining with countless pink
Nancy Reagan
roses and yellow lilies. Among the flowers loom a thicket of newsreel cameras and boom microphones.

Miss Kathie walks what
Walter Winchell
calls “the bridal
mile” wearing what
Sheilah Graham
calls “very off-white” posing what
Hedda Hopper
calls a “veiled threat.”

“Something old, something new, something borrowed,”
Louella Parsons
would write in her column, “and something extremely fishy.”

Miss Kathie seems too ready to be placed under what
Elsa Maxwell
calls “spouse arrest.”

At the altar
Lon McCallister
cools his heels as best man, standing next to a brown pair of eyes. This year’s groom, the harried, haggard, battle-scarred
Webster Carlton Westward III
.

Crowding the bride’s side of the church, the guests include
Kay Francis
and
Donald O’Connor, Deanna Durbin
and
Mildred Coles, George Bancroft
and
Bonita Granville
and
Alfred Hitchcock, Franchot Tone
and
Greta Garbo
, all the people who failed to attend the funeral for little
Loverboy
.

As
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
would say, “More stars than there are in heaven …”

On her trip to the altar, my Miss Kathie throws looks and kisses to
Cary Grant
and
Theda Bara
. She waves a white-gloved hand at
Arthur Miller
and
Deborah Kerr
and
Danny Kaye
. From behind her veil she smiles at
Johnny Walker, Laurence Olivier, Randolph Scott
and
Freddie Bartholomew, Buddy Pepper, Billy Halop, Jackie Cooper
and a tiny
Sandra Dee
.

Her gaze wafting to a familiar mustache, Miss Kathie sighs,
“Groucho!”

It’s through a veil that my darling Miss Kathie most looks like her true self. Like someone who throws you a look from the window of a train, or from the opposite side of a busy street, blurred behind speeding traffic, a face whom you could wed in that moment and imagine yourself happy to
live with forever. Her face, balanced and composed, so full of potential and possibility, she looks like the answer to everything wrong. Just to meet her violet eyes feels like a blessing.

In the basement of this same building, within the crypt that holds her former “was-band”
Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq.
, alongside the ashes of
Lothario
and
Romeo
and
Loverboy
, amid the dead soldiers of empty champagne bottles, down there waits the mirror which contains her every secret. That defaced mirror of
Dorian Gray
, it forms a death mask even as the world kills her a little more each year. That scratched web of scars etched by myself wielding the same
Harry Winston
diamond that the Webster specimen now slips on her finger.