The Cheese
THE CHEESE
High, ho, the derry-o
The cheese stands alone…
—“THE FARMER IN THE DELL”
December 1983
“1984 is going to be a great year,” Ella told Beanie. More a declaration than a wish, they were sitting together quietly on a Sunday morning, in the living room of their apartment with the MGM lion hovering outside the window, like a reminder that they too would roar. It was three days before New Year’s, and they both felt at peace. Beanie, eating a scooped-out bagel with low-fat cream cheese, looked over to Ella, who was working the New York Times crossword puzzle, and smiled. “What’s up?” Ella asked. But Beanie didn’t have words. She just felt happy, relieved, grateful. Moze, who had easily become her project if not her obsession, had landed the most coveted desk in the industry. And it never would have happened without Ella’s help.
“You’re like the sister I never had,” Beanie told her.
“Ditto,” Ella said, shuddering at the thought of the sister she did have, the one she hadn’t spoken to or about in years. Ella Gaddy had wiped away her past and escaped to Hollywood. It wasn’t the fact that it was glamorous or beautiful or twenty-five hundred miles away from home; it was the fact that in Hollywood you could be anyone you wanted. And Ella wanted to be someone who could start over, erase the Eve Lynns, the Alice Lees, and the rules about decorum and manners and having a child out of wedlock. The ole Kentucky homestead was part of a world that informed everything she didn’t want, and to share it even with her best friend was to give it life. The only life from her past she cared about was now being raised by a family in Chicago that she’d handpicked and secretly wished had raised her. Ella wasn’t dishonest about her past. She was oblique.
And Beanie was smart enough not to pry. None of it mattered, not really.
So, she kept her distance regarding Ella’s past, and focused on their future. Together, they decided, they would be the team of the ’80s, especially now that Ella had finally agreed to work for Garry as his secretary. Beanie couldn’t believe she’d hesitated. This was a choice job, and Garry Sampson as a conduit to Sam Lesser would be working with the biggest stars in the world. Which meant Ella would be working with them.
Everyone was moving up—Garry, Barry, Moze, Ella—but no position among this upwardly mobile and ambitious group was more eagerly awaited than Beanie’s, who would work for Jamie Garland, the new head of the motion picture talent department. She had found a woman to mentor her, to help her push through the waves of “no secretaries allowed” and maybe perhaps, one day, become an agent. Beanie was so excited, she even let Miriam buy her a purple Anne Klein tailored suit, which was sleek and slimming with removable shoulder pads, held on by two Velcro strips, so she could be either imposing or demure.
“It’s very Linda Evans,” Ella told her, surveying her friend as she finished off the outfit with a chunky gold chain necklace, matching gold medallion earrings, black Pappagallo pumps, and a new briefcase courtesy of Barry, Ella, Garry, and Moze. “Next stop: the world,” they had told her as they celebrated the New Year together.
January 3, 1984, Beanie Rosen, a shoulder-padded vision in purple, walked straight to her new desk in front of Jamie’s beautifully appointed new offices decorated in blue and white by none other than David Hicks. She was greeted by Nancy Barlow.
Beanie, confused at first, thinking perhaps Nancy had forgotten something, asked why she was there.
Nancy took a deep breath and opened the door to the office. “Why don’t we go inside?” she said, guiding Beanie into Jamie’s beautiful blue-and-yellow office, now stuffed with flowers, cards, and blinking lights on the multiple phones that Beanie had installed and silenced.
Though she had a sinking feeling she knew the answer, Beanie asked the question anyway. “What’s going on?” she said, listening as Nancy guiltily admitted that she’d had a change of heart.
“I don’t want to leave Jamie,” she told her, explaining that she’d tried to deny her feelings, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense that she give Sylvan Light a try.
“What about your casting job?” Beanie asked, referring to the extra’s job on John Hughes’s Breakfast Club.
“He’s using someone local in Chicago,” Nancy told her, explaining that she had called Jamie two days earlier to talk it over. “She wanted me to make sure you were okay with it,” Nancy said. “So, are you okay?”
Beanie, mouth dry, just walked away.
“I’m sorry, Beanie,” Nancy said as she left the office. “You made agenting seem so exciting, I wanted to see what it’s like. Who knows?” she shouted to Beanie, halfway down the hall, “maybe we’ll be agents together!”
For the first time in three years, Beanie had nowhere to go. She was out of ideas, out of gas, and out of time. She sat in Ella’s secretarial chair while Ella, dumbfounded, threatened to scratch Nancy’s eyes out.
“Let it be,” Beanie told her sadly, explaining that it wasn’t Nancy’s fault. She’d had second thoughts; Beanie didn’t blame her. You don’t leave someone like Jamie Garland and expect the world to let you fly. Nancy needed protection just like Ella did, and Barry did, and Garry did, and even Mercedes Baxter. They had all worked the system one way or another to get ahead.
Except Beanie. She had failed.
“At some point in some game,” Beanie told Ella, “the cheese stands alone.” Beanie, the cheese, typed up a resignation letter.
“Maybe you can float for a while,” Ella said, desperately searching for a solution.
But Beanie knew there was none. She had gone too far announcing her position with enough authority that the absence of it would leave her only one option.
Still in shock, she walked down to Personnel to officially resign when a beautiful redhead, complete with a short red skirt, legwarmers, and a headband, burst in ahead of her, weeping that Mike Barron had called her a slut for not doing the splits in front of him.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she told Carol Lesak, who tried to calm her down, as she’d been taught, especially when it came to one of Barron’s sexitaries.
Beanie watched the familiar scene unfold, and then something clicked inside of her.
This wasn’t just a random complaint. It was a unique opportunity disguised as an Olivia Newton-John workout video. On autopilot, she marched straight into Mike Barron’s office.
Barron, who was at his desk, turned around. “Yes?” he said in a tone that was more annoyed than curious. “What do you want?”
“I want to be your secretary.”
He laughed.
She didn’t.
“You think I need a secretary?” he asked, amused and perhaps a bit impressed by her chutzpah.
“No, Mike Barron, I think you need me,” she said, and then packed up the redhead’s bags. “Now, let’s get to work.”
And just like that, Beanie Rosen was no longer the cheese.