All the Stars in the Heavens (15 page)

Loretta rolled up the shade on her window as the sun came up, and looked out over the mountains of northern California. The sky was gray except for a stripe of orange on the horizon.

An early riser by habit, Loretta was dressed for the day and hungry. She grabbed her script and went to the dining car, pushing the button that opened the glass doors. Stale smoke and the scent of good bourbon hung in the air from the all-night party that had ended a couple hours earlier. The dining car was empty except for Clark Gable, who was sitting in the same booth in the same clothes he had worn the day before.

“Good morning, Mr. Gable,” Loretta said, taking a seat at the booth farthest from him.

“Miss Young.” He nodded.

Loretta wore a red corduroy skirt and matching sweater. Her lips were as ruby red as the cashmere. She placed her script on the table and studied the menu.

“Would you like to sit with me?” Gable said softly.

Gable's sweet humility moved her. She smiled. “Would you like me to?”

“Please.”

Loretta got up and joined him in his booth.

“Did you get much sleep?” Taking a good look at him up close, Loretta could see that he hadn't.

“A little.”

“Do you always celebrate before you work?”

“Not always. Do you always go to bed at nine?”

“Not always.” She smiled. “I need my beauty sleep.”

“I don't think so. I don't think you need anything.”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Would I?”

“I'm not even the looker in my family. My sister Sally is a blonde, and she has a wicked crush on you.”

“She does?”

“Has since
Night Nurse
.”

“I was lousy in it.”

“I thought so too.”

Gable threw his head back and laughed. “You mean it?”

“Of course I mean it. I only signed on to this ship of fools because I saw
It Happened One Night.
You're really good in that.”

“Thank you.”

“Now you're supposed to return the compliment. Have you seen any of my pictures?”

“Here and there.”

“And what did you think of my work?” she asked.

“Would we be on this train together if I wasn't keen on you?”

“I guess not. You just worked with Robert Leonard. He was my first director. In 1917.”

“Were you even born then?”

“I was four years old. Played a fairy.”

“How did you do?”

“I flew. And I liked it. Did you ever fly?”

“In
Hell Divers
.”

“Not at work, not in an airplane. In your dreams. I get those flying dreams before I start a picture. How about you?”

“No dreams. Just garden-variety anxiety. I mostly worry if I'm going to look an idiot.”

“That's why you stayed up all night. If you stay awake, the fear won't get you.”

“Oh, it'll get me regardless.”

“I wouldn't worry. As long as you're acting with me, we'll get it right.”

“How big of you to give me a chance after
Night Nurse
.”

“Why wouldn't I? Every actor I know has one or two pictures they'd like to bury in the desert.”

“What would you bury?”

“Oh, I don't know.” Loretta thought it over. “I've made around fifty, so I'd say forty-nine of them.”

The porter brought the newspaper to Gable. “We stopped in Big Bear last night. Got the latest for you, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Gable opened the newspaper and scanned it.

“Anything interesting?”

“Just checking if my buddy Niven is in prison yet.”

Loretta grabbed the newspaper. “Oh, no!” She scanned the paper quickly for his name, but couldn't find it.

“I was teasing.” Gable laughed.

“Thank goodness.”

“Had to get you back for your bad review of my work.”

“That wasn't David Niven's fault.”

Gable tried not to smile. “You like Niven?”

“He's a good and loyal friend.”

“If you have one of those in Hollywood, you're lucky.”

“It sounds like we both do.”

Loretta opened her script and started to read the new scenes.

Gable took note of her focus and concentration. He ordered a pot of black coffee. Loretta wasn't just any starlet, she wasn't just any girl—she was something entirely new, and Gable knew he'd have to be stone cold sober to keep up with her.

A
s a general leads his soldiers into battle to win, the director leads his actors into a movie with high hopes to create a surefire hit. Bill Wellman led his cast and crew out of Los Angeles on a train, through two states, into Seattle and on to Bellingham, Washington, for a final trek across a snow-covered field to the Mount Baker Inn. Wellman had convinced the studio that the adventure story was best served on location, where dramatic vistas, painterly skylines, and snow were in abundance.

The Mount Baker Inn served as their base of operations as they filmed
The Call of the Wild
.

There were a hundred of them, cast and crew, laughing and joking as they traipsed through the frozen tundra. This was all new to them, and for the first few hours, the novelty of winter was exciting, as they imagined the fun to be had marooned on a mountaintop with the studio bosses hundreds of miles away and enough crates of Glenfiddich whisky to keep them smiling through the cold.

This movie was written as a great American adventure story of ambition and greed during the Gold Rush, one that Wellman insisted should not be told on a sound stage with sets built of plywood and soap flakes, no matter how artful the results. Wellman wanted the real thing, and he got it. Mount Baker was drenched in
new-fallen snow over a hardened shell of layers of ice. The mountain peaks pierced the pale blue sky like knitting needles in skeins of soft wool. If it was treacherous, that reality was hidden on the morning of their arrival, as a gold marble sun hung low and bright in the sky over fields of white-hot diamond dust.

Bill Wellman pushed the door of the Mount Baker Inn open and invited his cast and crew inside.

Jack Oakie, the headliner on the I Want to Impress Loretta Young Tour, had volunteered to carry Loretta's luggage, while Luca had picked up Alda's. They ushered the ladies through the door and into the hotel.

The lobby was a massive great room with a double-sided hearth that crackled with a roaring fire. It was the only touch of warmth in the inn. It was so cold inside, the floorboards creaked like evergreen branches loaded with snow. The decor was simple, as the hotel was typically open only in the summers for swimming in the lake and fishing on the river.

The management made attempts to accommodate the cast and crew by providing them with an old overstuffed sofa, a matching love seat, and a set of club chairs covered in cinnamon chenille pushed close to the hearth. This was as close as the decor came to cozy living.

“Where's the dining room?” Luca asked.

“The Italian is always worried about the grub,” the camera operator said as he dropped his bags on the floor.

“By suppertime, you'll be glad I do,” Luca said.

“Dining room is out the building, to your right. “The clerk pointed.

Alda looked out the window and saw a barn with a tin roof behind the hotel.

“Now we know who put the rust in
rustic
,” Loretta whispered to Alda.

The production manager handed out envelopes with keys and room assignments.

Gable, disheveled after the long trip, was looking forward to a shower and a shave. He slung his leather duffel over his back and climbed the stairs.

Wellman called after him, “I'd like the actors to gather in the meeting room in an hour. We're going to go through the script.”

“You got it, Captain.” Gable disappeared at the top of the stairs.

Jack Oakie was eager to take Loretta's bags to her room. She thanked him but demurred. “I can take it from here, Jack.”

Alda took her bag from Luca. “Thank you.”

“What are you doing this afternoon?”

“Whatever Miss Young needs.”

“She's going to be busy rehearsing. I could use your help.”

“Let me ask her.”

“I already did.”

“What did she say?”

“She said you're free.”

Alda felt cornered, and yet she liked Luca. He was energetic and full of fun. And he was the first man she had kissed since she left Italy seven years ago. “What do you need?”

“We're going to be creative.”

Gable was particular about his wardrobe. He unpacked his suitcase, hanging his pants and shirts neatly in the closet. In the dresser, he lay his undershorts, socks, and thermals next to his belts, coiled tightly. He unpacked his toiletries and lined them up on the sink in his private bathroom. Ria had bought new bottles and tubes of his favorite toiletries to last through the shoot. He smiled. Ria's best attribute as a wife was that she anticipated his needs and took care of them without his having to ask.

As the tub filled with water, he built a fire. He turned the lamps on and put up the shades. He needed light; he thrived on it. He sank into the tub and scrubbed himself head to toe, paying special attention to his nails.

Gable shaved carefully; a nick could set a picture back while a cut healed. He brushed his hair until it had the sheen of black patent leather. He rubbed cologne in his hands, a mix of pine and bitter orange, his own custom blend. He rubbed it on his face and neck and pushed back his hair, which was long because Wellman had asked him to keep it shaggy.

The actor wore a pair of Levi's, lined with blue-and-green flannel,
which he belted with a blue suede belt with a gold buckle. He pulled on a hand-knit turtleneck sweater his wife had commissioned from a weaver in Ireland, his Christmas gift from his stepchildren. The weave of blue and green complemented his gray eyes, but he wasn't concerned about the aesthetic appeal; he was trying to keep warm.

The actor looked at his watch. He had a half hour before the cast was to gather and read through the script, and he wanted to run through it one last time. He had his own specific ritual with the script.

Gable read his lines aloud, on his feet, every exchange of dialogue. When he finished, he took one last look in the mirror, grabbed the script, and went to meet his director and fellow actors for the table read.

Loretta was sitting by the fire in the lobby, reading through her script, when Gable appeared on the landing of the stairs. When she looked up at him, it was as though she were watching him on a silver screen. He had a casual elegance. No other man in the world could have pulled off that sweater, but on him it was fashionable. No wonder Gable had enchanted every woman in Hollywood, from Joan Crawford to Jean Harlow. He was scrumptious, and there were plenty of women hungry for him.

As Gable turned on the landing, a hotel maid, a girl of around twenty with her hair pulled back in a single gold braid, came out of the office behind the desk and turned to go up the stairs. She stopped and greeted him and then tried to move past him, but he blocked her. He made her laugh. He leaned in and said something in her ear that made her blush. She was not shy; she whispered in his ear, and he got the look of a hungry wolf. Gable's face turned into a pen-and-ink line drawing of a scavenger, all bulging eyes and wild mane and black pits and dark shadows and teeth looking to bite.

Loretta's stomach turned. She was dismayed by what she'd witnessed—or was she? Was she jealous? Or was it simply the cheaper version, pea-green envy? Did Loretta long to be an ordinary girl with some pleasant aspects—in the case of the hotel maid, say, lovely hair and eyes—who was free to flirt with a man, in this case, Clark Gable,
and want nothing in return? Well, Loretta was certain that Gable wanted something, but she could not be sure about the hotel maid. It certainly appeared like they had a lot to say to each other. It seemed to Loretta that they had made plans to see each other, to continue the conversation.

The maid took her bucket and mop and ascended the stairs. Gable watched her climb as Loretta watched him. He didn't take his eyes off the maid's ample fanny, watching it wiggle from side to side, step by step, as she went up the stairs. Usually Loretta would mind her manners, look away, and pretend not to have caught the wolf in the act, but this time she thought differently. She sat up in the chair and closed her script. Her gaze bored through Clark Gable like the sharp blade of a knife through a fresh pie.

Gable felt Loretta's gaze and met it. He extended to her, across the room, the same knowing leer he had offered the hotel maid. She, actress that she was, without words, sent Gable a return message that withered him
.
You don't have a chance with me, bud. Stick to the hotel maid.

Gable took in her meaning, rebounded with arrogant bravado, and walked past her without saying a word.

“We're here to work,” Bill Wellman said from behind her.

Loretta turned to him. “I love the script.”

“Do you think your leading man has read it?”

“We read it together on the train.”

“That's good to know.”

“We're going to make a swell picture, Bill.”

“As long as that big goof keeps his mind on his business.”

Loretta figured that Wellman had observed the flirtation between Gable and the hotel maid, too. “Now, Bill, you know you'd have more luck stopping an avalanche with your bare hands than you do keeping Mr. Gable from that hotel maid.”

“I'm not worried about her. I'm worried about you.”

“I have to learn how to navigate a raft on a real river, shoot a bear between the eyes, and hike a mountain peak. Don't worry about me. I've got plenty to keep me busy.”

Wellman followed Gable to the meeting room.

It bothered Loretta that she had a reputation for falling easily and
hard for her leading men. She tried very hard not to, but between the long hours she kept at the studio and the few she had off to prepare for her roles at home, it was likely that the only place she would meet potential beaus was on a sound stage. Wellman loathed publicity, puff or negative, and probably had judged her because of the press release she had authorized about her breakup with Spencer Tracy. She couldn't worry about that now, and besides, the personal life of a director was not scrutinized like the life of an actress. Wellman could not possibly understand her position.

Loretta gathered up her script and followed the director, looking forward to the first read-through of the script. After all, the classic Jack London story was why she agreed to act in the movie and climb this particular mountain in the first place.

Alda followed Luca as he trudged through the snow to the dining hall. He pushed a metal sliding entrance door open, revealing long community-style tables set up for meals.

A set of a dozen windows overlooked the snow-capped mountains behind them. The view—rolling fields of white that sloped away like dollops of whipped cream—was luscious, a contrast to the barn, which was strictly utilitarian: the mottled trusses on the ceiling were held together with rusty bolts; the walls were weathered beams of knotty pine, with light pouring through tiny slits where the wood had worn away.

Beyond a serving island was an old service kitchen. Alda could see every pot and pan, an open coal stove with burners, and stacks of industrial white ceramic dishes. The roaring fire in the flagstone fireplace was the only heat source in the barn. Luca moved around the room, surveying it.