Getting Garbo (3 page)

Rodeo Drive is just another sleepy second-string shopping street. Books, garden supplies, haberdashery. None of the exclusive shops and salons. The action is all a block east on Beverly Drive. But the rents are cheaper on Rodeo. I find a parking space easily in front of Francis Orr Stationers. Adrienne's Emporium is next door. Tasteful window display done in imported-snobby. I sail into the store, still flying from the aquavit and the adrenaline from my Romanoff's adventure. Full of righteous indignation. There are only a couple of shoppers browsing the inventory of expensive furnishings that I've paid for and hardly ever see any return on. But Addie claims that's normal for a startup interior decorator operation. I always ask her, Addie, why don't all the other decorators in town bother with their own showrooms? She says I don't understand. And don't call her Addie around the clients. She's
Adrienne.

“Where's Addie?” I loudly ask one of the sedate sales biddies.

She looks like I just farted in front of the queen. Hands flutter. “Miss Adrienne is in the office, Mr. Darnell. But she's in a meeting with—”

I turn. Chug to the rear. In passing I give a nod to Benjy, the muscle-bound black security guy, sitting on a sale-priced Eames chair, reading the
Hollywood Reporter.
“Hey, Roy, how's the man?” he greets. Benjy's after me to help him get his SAG card so he can become the next Sidney Poitier.

Through the glass wall of her office, I can see Addie. She's with Guy Saddler. He's this retired movie set decorator who once won an Oscar for Garbo's
Camille.
Now he's on our payroll as a “consultant.” That seems to translate into standing around fingering fabric swatches and reminiscing about “my most recent fortnight in Milano.” They spend a lot of time together, Addie and Guy, but he's light in the loafers so I never mind—except for the sarcasm he aims in my direction. As if I'm too much of an animal to even understand I'm being insulted. He gestures in my direction and Addie looks over. He whispers something snively in his Clifton Webb voice and she gives a small laugh and steps out to meet me.

So here she is, folks. The girl that I married. She still looks so much like the first moment I saw her. Shoulder-length chestnut hair. Beverly Hills Tennis Club tan. We used to play together. Good legs, terrific boobs. Hazel eyes that always used to be ready for laughter.

When we met, that's six years ago, she was working her way through Columbia pre-law by writing feature stories for
Film Daily
in New York. I was playing the Prince on CBS-Radio's
Let's Pretend
every Saturday morning. She did the first interview on me. At Sardi's. Gotta love her, right? We were a perfect combination. Opposites attracting. The college chick and the high school dropout. She taught me how to read and I taught her how to fuck. Oversimplified? Sure. The important thing to remember is how close we were then. Two kids out to beat the world. Together. And it worked like a road map. She graduated Columbia University and through a
Film Daily
contact got a job at Columbia Pictures in New York. Negotiating contracts, keeping an eye out for work for me. After Bogie brought me to the Coast, she transferred here, too. Everything was marvelous when we were getting started. It was when I succeeded that the problems began.

She hates Jack Havoc. Resents the heads turning on the street, the fans interrupting dinner at restaurants, calling her “Mrs. Havoc.” She despises that. So she blames me. “It seems you've acquired all the annoyances and none of the advantages of being famous,” she likes to say. Nice talk, huh?

Also, she hit a roadblock at Columbia when Harry Cohn made a pass at her. She rebuffed him so vigorously that he canned her. End of one career. Start of another. Addie helped Bogie and Betty decorate their new house in Holmby Hills. Home run! Addie's suddenly in demand as a decorator. Loves being Adrienne. Working the party circuit, trolling for clients. That's when I got left behind. The kid from South Philly snoozing at dinner parties during heated discussions between elegant pansies and snide society bitches about Kurdistan carpeting and fun new fabrics. But at least Addie was making money at it then. When she talked me into backing her store, I thought that'd get us close again. It only got us deeper in hock.

So now I look at her in the office doorway. She is far from smiling.

“I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd drop in,” I say. “Anything new goin' on?”

“Don't play games, Roy. The process server just phoned.”

“What the hell's this all about, Addie? No warning, no discussion—”

She reaches behind her into the office. Guy Saddler hands her an 8x10 envelope. She hands it to me. “I warned you.”

“Addie, c'mon, don't be dramatic. Whatever's bothering you, we can talk it out, like always, if you just give me a—”

She gives me a little tired wave. I think she's weakening. But when Benjy grips my elbow, I realize she's signaling him. “This is ridiculous, Addie, you can't just—” I vigorously shake off Benjy. Just like I do on the show. But Benjy's ready for me, twists my arm behind my back.

“Roy,” Addie sounds so bored. “Sometimes I think you think you really
are
Jack Havoc.” She tosses a dismissive wave of her hand and Benjy starts giving me the bum's rush toward the front door.

“You're gonna be sorry, sweetie, very sorry!” I yell over my shoulder before Benjy propels me bodily out onto the sidewalk.

“No offense, Roy,” Benjy says, releasing me, dusting my lapel. “Just my job, y'know?”

Yeah, I think, well, find someone else to get you your SAG card. Benjy goes back inside. I'm left with egg on my face and the 8x10 envelope in my hand.

Feels like photos in the envelope.

That's when a chill runs down my spine.

“It's my fault,” I whisper.

“What is?” Podolsky whispers back.

We're hiding in the bushes, watching the driveway portico of Earl Carroll's nightclub on Sunset Boulevard. A special event's being held here tonight, the annual BOOMTOWN show, when all the Hollywoodites dress up in cowboy clothes for some charity. In another few minutes, the driveway's going to be jammed with departing stars. We're perfectly positioned, unless the parking attendants spot us first and chase us away.

“Letting that guy with the subpoena serve Roy,” I say. “My fault.”

“Grow up,” Podolsky says. He's twenty-one, only two years older than I am, but he likes to gives me his condescending George Sanders sneer of disdain (in his Bronx accent). “Reva, you have a deluded sense of the amount of control you exert over the universe.”

Barry Podolsky, my best friend and worst critic, is skinny as a string bean and has thick horn-rimmed glasses that fog up when he gets excited. We go back to the New York days.

“No, really, I blame myself,” I tell him.

It's been bothering me all day. I feel like I should have left well enough alone when that redheaded kid, at least we thought he was just another kid, strolled up to us collectors outside Romanoff's at lunchtime. He said, “Who you guys waiting for?” and we said “Ginny Sims,” as we usually do, because Ginny Sims, the former band singer who's on the radio now, is well-known enough so that her name is recognized, but nobody's ever sufficiently excited to hang around to see her, so they always walk off, which is what we want. But then the redheaded kid smiles his freckled Butch Jenkins smile and says, “Somebody said Roy Darnell was in there,” and I, of course, had to say, proudly, as if I were talking to a fellow fan, “As a matter of fact, he is.” So I figure I kinda trapped Roy for the subpoena guy.

“You didn't make him go into his Jack Havoc routine and try to take a poke at the process server,” Podolsky whispers.

“Roy shouldn't drink so much at lunch,” I concede.

Podolsky snickers. “That's like telling a camel not to tank up on water at the oasis.”

I worry about Roy's drinking lately. It's where all the Roy the Bad Boy behavior comes from, I'm sure of it.

“Hey, if they didn't serve the papers on him at Romanoff's, they'd've got him somewhere else,” Podolsky points out. “So let's not dramatize, dahling.”

“Divorce. I never thought it'd happen. I mean, I know Roy fooled around a little—”

Podolsky snorts. “A
little?
”

“Okay, a lot, but I thought he and Addie would stay together forever and—”

Podolsky interrupts. “Heads up, here we go!”

The doors to the nightclub fly open and people start pouring out. The parking attendants race to bring up the cars for the stars. The last thing they have time for is the handful of collectors, who appear out of the darkness and have a field day. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

That's how autograph collecting is on the West Coast. Not that I'm complaining. Of course, most of the collectors out here look like cornfed surfers. They're nice and all, but the thing of it is, they don't have a sense of history. For instance, if I say to Podolsky, “I vant to be alone,” he knows I'm imitating Greta Garbo, but the L.A. collectors are too young to even know who Garbo is, let alone how totally rare her autograph is. Generally speaking, the California collectors have it too soft. The stars live out here, so if you miss someone on Monday, there's always Tuesday, or a week from Tuesday. It's all
mañana.
Go stand outside the studio gates and the stars will come driving right up to you. When there's a premiere, the
L.A. Times
prints alphabetized lists of the celebs who are coming. It's almost too easy.

In New York, you had to be good. Stars might pass through for just a few hours, so you had to be fast, sharp, plugged in. Emergency alert: no one even knew Errol Flynn's in town, but he's boozing at the Stork Club before boarding the Queen Mary. Get a move on! Of course, even back East most of the collectors, they were out of it. They were crumb collectors, operating alone, no organization, hit or miss. I say that with no disrespect, because I was a crumb collector myself, until I was rescued by the Secret Six.

Actually, there were more like ten or eleven of us, but the Secret Six had a nice ring to it. We were like a machine, hardly anyone ever got past us. We always had someone on the pavement at mealtimes at Sardi's and the “21” Club, clocking in the celebs and coordinating intelligence with Arleigh, who was control central at her apartment in Queens; we all checked in with her by phone. At night we covered the Broadway plays, there was one of us standing in the crowded lobby of every hit show, spotting who arrived. Then we'd gather at the Automat on 45th and Sixth and sit at a couple of tables off in a corner and make free lemonade out of the iced tea fixings and pool our information about who's where. General Eisenhower is at
Mr. Roberts,
Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli are at
Death of a Salesman,
Bing Crosby is at
Brigadoon,
Cary Grant is at
Streetcar,
Sinatra and Ava Gardner are at
South Pacific.
Like that. Of course, we knew the exact times for all the intermissions and when the shows were over. A precision operation.

Our activities extended to the posh hotels and the luxury ships that sailed the Atlantic. In those days, overseas air flights were just beginning, so most stars traveling to and from Europe still went by one of the great Cunard Liners. We'd find out who was coming in on the Queen Elizabeth and we'd take the subway down to the Customs Office at the Battery a couple days before and get passes to go onto the dock to meet imaginary relatives (they never had the complete passenger lists in advance of arrival) and be there to greet our favorites while they waited for their luggage. A collector working as a file clerk at United Artists used to sneak a peek at
Celebrity Service,
a very expensive, ultra-exclusive information sheet that detailed which hotels the stars were staying at. That simplified life for us.

Mostly we'd just call the stars at the hotels and say we were fans and ask when they were coming out. Some of the hotels we could sneak upstairs; we'd get the room numbers by calling the hotel and asking for reservations. Has Richard Widmark arrived yet? The reservation desk would say, He's already registered, and then they'd click the operator and say, Connect this call with Room Twenty-Two-Twenty. It was that easy in those days, and we had it down to a science.

We were like a shadow army and we knew everything about the stars, often before anyone else. We'd be waiting and watching late at night at the Pierre Hotel for Mario Lanza or the Plaza for Susan Hayward, when two other celebs married to two other people would come smooching out of a cab and into the hotel (sometimes it'd be two guys). Days, maybe weeks or even months later, the gossip columns might pick up the news, but the collectors knew it first. We talked among ourselves, but we never told anyone else. Spencer Tracy would stop off in town and always stay with Katharine Hepburn in her apartment overlooking the East River, then she'd drive him in her station wagon to catch the 20th Century Limited out of Grand Central. We'd be there, but we kept the stars' secrets.

We felt as if we were part of their world. Sure, we knew we were just on the fringes, but everyone else was on the outside. It was kind of our duty, our
responsibility,
to protect them from prying eyes and narrow minds. They were stars and couldn't be judged by the same standards as everybody else.

“Reva, look at that!” Podolsky yells at me across the portico.

I'm just getting Jane Withers's autograph; who knew she was still even alive? But I look in the direction Podolsky is pointing. Another second and I'd've missed the sight of the night: runty little Frank Sinatra, costumed and made-up as a Navajo Indian, hassling and suddenly leaping up to swing a roundhouse right like a tomahawk at mountainous Sheriff John Wayne. He only succeeds in knocking off his ten-gallon hat. Fearless Frank is obviously pissed at the Duke—probably about politics, money, or women, what else would they have to argue about?—but Wayne shoves Sinatra, who falls on his keister, and then dozens of people intervene, making it the second one-punch battle I've seen today.

Later, as he walks me to the bus stop, I tell Podolsky, “You know, I still blame myself.”