Chapter 5 People Can Surprise You
People Can Surprise You
Night hovers just past the city’s aura, that faded line of lights.
Despite Nico’s hints that the studio needs a financial hit, the film industry in general has benefited from an increased need to run from reality and crawl into the fantasies of movies.
But the rest of the city suffers with the rest of the country.
Shantytowns, or Hoovervilles, as some call them—a nod to their outgoing president, Herbert Hoover—are common in most major cities, and despite Los Angeles’s efforts to clean up before hosting last summer’s Olympics, there are many; one of them has more than seven hundred people.
Houses made of tar paper, tents, and discarded boards.
Stoves made of car gasoline tanks. In New York there are also shantytowns, such as Hoover Valley in Central Park, Packing Box City on Houston Street, and the one that was closest to Frankie, Hard Luck Town in the East Village, between Eighth Street and Tenth Street.
The tenement where she and her mother lived was bad enough, but Hard Luck Town loomed at the edge of her life.
The fact that Frankie didn’t end up someplace like it was strictly a result of the job she got with Nico.
Though the truth is, she’s still only a couple of paychecks away from that same fate, with an apartment paid for by the studio, a car that’s not hers, not much in savings, and a job she suspects only Nico would hire her for, since she’s a woman and even has an arrest on her record that Nico actually seems to approve of.
As different as her life looks, that difference is only a front.
On the way to get Jack, she passes well-to-do neighborhoods smack against slums. Sometimes it’s only blocks that make the difference, the houses suddenly becoming smaller and crowded before again becoming wider and bigger, streets seeming to expand like boa constrictors that swell in certain spots.
Once, she heard, Wilshire Boulevard was a twenty-foot-wide dirt road with a peppering of oil wells and a smattering of barley fields.
Now, the whole city feels under construction, like a child who keeps growing.
When she’s stopped at a light, she spots a hot dog vendor on the corner.
Near the studio, there’s a former silent film star who now sells hot dogs, thanks to the advent of talkies and a thick Swedish accent that hurled through the screen like a sack of rocks, dragging him down from a celebrated star to a no one.
That’s how drastically life can change. How swift the fall can be when the perch you’re on was built precariously.
Nico and plenty of others have tried to make a study of it, adhering to the words of Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, who warned about the public’s standards and demands, and the risk in going against them.
While Nico tried to argue that the silent film star should’ve expected it, that anyone with an accent should’ve seen the tide changing with the coming of sound, Frankie sees it differently: The public wants what it wants, ruthlessly, and what seems like an endless stream of love can run bone dry, just like that.
The Ambassador Hotel stretches across twenty-four acres of manicured land and is a new height of luxury, the host site of the Academy Awards and the home of the Cocoanut Grove, a Mediterranean- and Moorish-style club that serves alcohol despite Prohibition.
Papier-maché palm trees stand tall, taken from the set of one of Frankie’s mother’s favorite films, Valentino’s 1921 The Sheik.
Illuminated stars dot the dark ceiling, and when John Barrymore is present, so is his monkey, Clementine, often perched by life-size mechanical monkeys, each with glowing amber eyes.
The sight of Clementine spotting other monkeys and eagerly racing to join them only to be confused by the lie has broken Frankie’s heart over and over, so now if she spots Mr. Barrymore’s Murphy body L-29 Town Car with its long, extended front, she knows not to go inside.
When she parks at the Ambassador, she’s so lost in thought that she doesn’t see Dottie, Magda’s rival, approaching from between the cars. Suddenly Dottie’s walking alongside her, matching her pace, a lit cigarette trailing smoke.
“You gave me fluff.”
Frankie doesn’t stop. If Dottie’s been inside, that means she probably saw Jack or, worse, spoke to him. There’s no telling what mess Frankie will have to clean up. “I didn’t give you fluff.”
“You gave me fluff. But by the way, I appreciate fluff, when it’s true.”
“So now I’m a liar? Joan Crawford really said that. I’m sure of it.”
“Tell me this then, to make up for it: Is it true that June Finney submitted herself for that same beauty contest that Clara Bow won, back in ’21? The one for Motion Picture magazine?”
Frankie glances at her. Two red rhinestone barrettes hold Dottie’s short hair back, and flash in the night like warnings. “What, when she was a kid? Come on.”
Dottie quickly brings the cigarette to her mouth, and smoke fills her words. “June was a working actress at fifteen.”
“Sounds like you know more than I do. I should be asking you.”
Frankie walks faster, but Dottie matches her pace. “But you don’t know if they competed, even back then?”
Even back then, implying they compete now.
It’s dangerous territory, to speak of June competing with any actress, but with Clara Bow especially—because it’s true.
Though Clara’s fame is undeniable—the actress gets forty-five hundred fan letters a month—and she and June are close to the same age, Clara’s nowhere near June’s popularity, yet for some reason June keeps a close eye on her, tracking her success and box office receipts and movie announcements even more than she does those of bigger names such as Joan Crawford or Greta Garbo.
Frankie’s never understood the competition, as they’re in no way the same.
June was from a small Midwestern town, the shining hope in a family that struggled to make ends meet but got food on the table.
Clara lived destitute in a Brooklyn tenement, and wasn’t anyone’s hope, an existence that was real and raw and would never fit neatly into a studio bio.
She can cry on cue, Nico once said of Clara Bow, and we won’t talk about why.
“What I know is Clara’s been through enough,” Frankie says, referring to the lawsuit the actress became embroiled in when her best friend and secretary stole money and personal correspondence, which she then leaked to the gossip magazines. “Now I have someplace to be.”
“You mean in there, rescuing Jack Sawyer?”
Frankie’s steps slow. Dottie must see this, because she comes out firing.
“The night his engagement is announced,” she says dramatically, “and he’s out drinking and chatting with the ladies—methinks this spells trouble.”
Chatting with the ladies. Dottie’s younger than Magda, hungrier, and lacks the finesse of someone who’s established.
Frankie stops walking, tired. “Today was the announcement, like you said. Not the day he proposed. He’s allowed to be out without his fiancée.
For all you know, he just had dinner and is waiting to meet a director.
Don’t you have something better to look into? ”
Dottie laughs. “The nature of celebrity centers on the stars’ lives. Your own boss said that. It’s not just about their work, it’s about them.”
“He also said know when to quit. What is it you want?”
The red heart of the cigarette zigzags as Dottie speaks. “I do like how direct you are.”
“Then return the favor and tell me what you need.”
“Tell me what I have to do, to be the one. Magda gets all the good stuff.”
Frankie watches a couple leave the hotel, the man’s hand on the woman’s back. “It’s not me who decides. Though accusing me of lying when all I want is a drink—”
“You don’t drink.”
Now Frankie smiles.
“See?” Dottie says. “I pay attention. We could be good for each other. Both of us coming up in the world. Are you a Dry? Is that why you don’t drink?”
“I don’t drink because I don’t drink. And I just got promoted. So I don’t need help. I’m as high as I go.”
“For a woman, you mean.”
“For what I do. There’s no going past Nico.”
But Dottie must hear it differently than Frankie intended, because her eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t go against him, even if something was wrong?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The truth means nothing?”
Later, Frankie will replay these words, hearing them as both meaningful and hollow, that strange dichotomy their lives are composed of. But now, she only laughs and starts toward the building, stepping over a curb. “If you want the truth, Dottie, I’d say you’re in the wrong business.”
Jack is six foot three and the tallest person at the bar.
Above him, chandeliers with white alabaster shells blaze like suns.
As she approaches, Frankie sees the top of his head until he turns, smiling at something the bartender’s said.
The fact that he’s smiling is a relief, and she slows her pace, no longer feeling each second as one that might spiral out of control.
But then she gets close enough to hear him speak, and hears a Southern accent coming through, which runs contrary to the studio bio and means she’s arrived just in time.
“I thought you were from Montana?”
A woman’s asked this, and now Frankie spots three blondes and a brunette at his side.
The brunette arches her back, leaning against the bar to expose more of her cleavage.
With a few steps, Frankie presses herself behind Jack, her mouth right at his ear.
Soap, tobacco, and leather, that scent that makes her want to fold herself against him.
“Jack,” she says, and notices the woman against the bar straighten, confusion on her face that soon turns to possessiveness as she looks Frankie up and down.
Quietly, Frankie whispers into his ear, “What happened to your two-drink maximum?”