The Sharpest Needle Read online

‘That’s because I know what she’d say! She told me time and time again. “I’d rather be at my own home than someone else’s. That way they can’t throw me out.” At last I’m able to repay her many kindnesses to me, when she truly needs my help. And yours. And Edith’s.’ He paused. ‘W.R. avoided bankruptcy because of her, you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  Addison nodded somberly, then spoke in a muted voice suited to the subject of finance, which he seldom broached with me. ‘A lot of this is hearsay, you understand. But when his situation was at its more dire, W.R. needed a million dollars in cash at once. Marion converted her assets. W.R. wouldn’t take the money at first. Finally, he relented, and accepted it as a loan. Marion ended up owning the Boston Hearst newspapers as collateral. Even that wasn’t enough. W.R. soon needed another million. Marion arranged to borrow half of it, then sold her jewelry and mortgaged her real-estate holdings to come up with the balance. That’s the kind of woman, the kind of person, she is.’ He paused. ‘She told me she rarely wore the jewelry. I told her she didn’t need to. She sparkled without it.’ He drummed a fanfare on the table. ‘This takes priority, Lillian. I would love for her problem to be resolved by her party next Friday.’

  ‘I’ve been reading about it in the papers. I thought Marion was out of that racket.’

  ‘No, she’s back in business. Maybe to show the world W.R. is still on top, no matter the recent press about him having to sell off his art collection.’

  ‘And you’ll be going?’

  ‘Of course! Maud, sadly, will still be in Arizona resting, but I wouldn’t miss it. Saints and Sinners is the theme. I’ve been racking my brain thinking up suitable attire. In the meantime, I’m deputizing you. Whatever Marion requires, you are to deliver it. Everything else can wait.’

  Good thing Addison didn’t have a party of his own scheduled. Only Saturday’s dinner for a visiting friend from Boston was on the docket, an intimate affair for twenty. I’d lettered the place cards myself.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll get straight to it.’ I then spent the next ninety minutes rehearsing the college fight songs Addison and his cronies would sing, and reassuring him that the sand dabs he planned to serve were not only as good as scrod, but better.

  It was nearly noon by the time I cleared the decks to assist Marion. I began by telephoning Clarence Baird, recipient of the first Argus letter after hers. A chipper young voice resounded down the line. ‘Mr Baird?’ I inquired.

  ‘Heavens, no. I’ll get him. Whom shall I say is calling?’

  His sober response indicated my name meant something to him. A moment later, a second, querulous voice bellowed, ‘Yes? Who exactly is calling at lunchtime?’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Baird. I’m Lillian Frost. Marion Davies told you to expect my call.’

  ‘What? Marion didn’t say—’ I could hear the younger man cluing him in, Baird taking issue with something he said. Then he spoke to me again. ‘Yes, the letters. That sordid business. What is it you want?’

  ‘To speak to you.’

  ‘You’re speaking to me now, young woman.’

  I cupped the receiver so he couldn’t hear my sigh, then explained that Edith and I needed to speak to him in person, the sooner the better. Baird grumbled several times before saying, ‘Very well. Clifton’s Brookdale at five.’ I reminded him to bring the letter just before he hung up.

  Next, I dialed Rudi Vollmer. He answered after one ring with a crisp German accent. Yes, Miss Davies had contacted him. Yes, he would be happy to meet with us, and of course would bring the letter. All I had to do was arrange matters with Clarence first. Clarence, he explained, was the difficult one.

  ‘I’ve already spoken with Mr Baird.’

  ‘Good! So we will be meeting at Clifton’s, then?’ I said yes and told him the time. Vollmer laughed sharply and wished me good day.

  FOUR

  Following a final check of the preparations for Addison’s impromptu college reunion on Saturday, I had his chauffeur Rogers deliver me to Paramount like a bouquet of flowers, wilted and slightly damp. Rogers was still largely giving me the silent treatment because I’d almost dispatched us both to the Pearly Gates ahead of our appointed times during an impromptu driving lesson. I decided to be the bigger person and jabbered away about my weekend plans to his hunched shoulders.

  I passed many familiar faces on my way to Edith’s office, the studio practically a second home to me now. Within the soft gray walls of her sedate sanctum sanctorum, I found Edith holding court with a man who had light-colored hair and a dagger of a nose. Slumping with easy elegance, hands in his pockets, he had the air of someone waiting for his cocktail to be delivered.

  Edith, in a white blouse printed with drawings of buttons in primary colors for which I would have paid a queen’s ransom, gestured to her companion. ‘Allow me to introduce Wally Westmore.’

  ‘The makeup genius?’ I blurted.

  ‘You probably mean one of my brothers,’ Westmore replied with a hint of boredom. I could readily understand why; assorted Westmore siblings, among them Mont, Perc, and Ern, had established strongholds in the makeup departments at almost every studio in town. The clan had also opened a storied beauty salon, The House of Westmore, which I had yet to patronize. I knew from the fan magazines that since 1926, Wally Westmore had been entrusted with Paramount’s most valuable assets: the faces of its stars.

  ‘I thought I would gather intelligence on Mr Baird from a fellow makeup man,’ Edith said.

  ‘And I’m afraid I wasn’t much help.’ Westmore shrugged. ‘I don’t know Clarence very well. He was on his way out of the business as I was getting started. He worked mostly in silent pictures and never really left them behind. Always thinking in terms of the theater, not the camera. His solution to any problem was to add more greasepaint. The times simply passed the man by. I’m fairly sure my brother Perc knocked him out of a job or two.’

  He pronounced his brother’s name ‘purse’, which meant I’d been mispronouncing it every time I read his praises sung in the gossip columns. Instead of admitting this faux pas, I asked, ‘Do you know when Clarence left the business?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. Anyway, none of us ever leaves the business. The business, sadly, leaves us. Clarence likely made it difficult on himself. He’s something of a big character, rather high-strung. The last few years he was working, he survived on the strength of his friendships. Like the one he had with Marion.’ Westmore peered down his long nose at Edith. ‘You did say Marion Davies suggested you look him up?’

  Edith nodded circumspectly. ‘Yes, in regards to a picture I’m working on.’

  ‘Marion always did like to surround herself with friends, the louder and more entertaining the better. Now she’s someone I could provide intelligence on.’

  Edith said nothing, so I did. ‘Oh?’ I prompted.

  ‘Perc worked with her many times. He thrived on being in her circle. Who wouldn’t, with the Davies schedule? Three hours of shooting then five hours of lunch. Perc said all Marion wanted to do was love, laugh, and play. Hated acting, in the end. Only kept it up because old man Hearst wanted her to be a star. Perc regularly found her in her cups and weeping before the cameras would roll, always had to redo her makeup. Still, a rare woman with a heart of gold. Do you remember Cain and Mabel, the picture she did with Gable? Had that production number with several battalions of chorus girls in it?’

  ‘“I’ll Sing You a Thousand Love Songs”,’ I said, recalling its lavishness with pleasure.

  ‘That’s the one. Ludicrous and excessive. They needed so many lights for that number the chorus girls were dropping like flies. Marion shipped in over a hundred pounds of ice for them to cool off at her own expense. And her with a cracked rib from dancing the day before.’

  ‘We could use some of that ice today,’ Edith said in a bright changing-the-subject tone. ‘Another name that came up was Rudi Vollmer, an old Paramount hand. Would you happen to know him?’

  ‘Afraid not. Another figure
from the bygone age of silent pictures? So many of them slipping away these days. Do you know who I ran into? I was at—’

  A faint fuss in the outer office interrupted him, the sound of voices trying not to be raised. There was a quick rap on the door, which opened to admit another man. He was balding, with a fringe of hair and a manicured mustache. He had keen eyes, the kind that didn’t want to find fault but were resigned to it. He wore a gray jacket over a sport shirt with collars as sharp as shark’s teeth, and cuffed trousers. The outfit gave him the affect of a dancer, a figure accustomed to constant motion.

  ‘Hello, Mitch,’ Edith said, rising. ‘I was about to step out. You’re lucky you caught me.’

  ‘You won’t think that in a minute.’ At that point, the man, whom I took to be director and Edith’s present nemesis, Mitchell Leisen, spotted Westmore and offered a cheery greeting. Edith introduced me as her friend. Leisen looked me up and down without a word, then turned to Edith and held out a slim portfolio. ‘These sketches won’t do.’

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. Why don’t we take a moment …?’ She drew him to the far reaches of her office, where they reviewed her work. Westmore considered his fingernails.

  ‘May I ask you a question, Mr Westmore?’

  ‘Is it about Claudette Colbert?’

  My abruptly beet-red complexion provided my answer.

  With infinite forbearance, Westmore said, ‘Yes, as every newspaper and magazine has reported, she believes she only looks good from one side.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It’s partly because she has a diamond face.’ He took pity on my ignorance. ‘One of the seven basic shapes of a woman’s face. Narrow forehead and chin, broad cheekbones. A few simple makeup tricks can address that, create width in the lower portion of the face. She also has an infinitesimal bump on the middle of her nose.’

  ‘I’ve never noticed it.’

  ‘That’s because I’ve hidden it.’ His voice swelled with pride. ‘The camera would make it look like Mount Whitney. I draw a fine white line down the length of her nose, and it disappears. As a result, she looks exquisite from any angle. But try telling her that.’

  Edith and Leisen were still going at it, genteel hammer and gracious tongs. I glanced at one of the many mirrors in Edith’s office. ‘What shape face do I have?’

  Westmore smiled. He looked like he’d just bitten into a particularly ripe lemon. ‘Stop by The House of Westmore. Our staff can explain the seven faces in detail, and appointments are quite reasonable.’

  Across the room, Leisen shook his head, expressing rejection and disappointment simultaneously. He held the portfolio out to Edith as if it contained the terms of surrender. With reluctance, she accepted it. ‘Dig deeper, Edith,’ he said solemnly. Then he turned to leave. ‘Have a good weekend, Wally,’ he called. To me, Leisen said nothing.

  The very portrait of patience, Edith tucked the portfolio under one arm as she slipped on a pair of thin white gloves. ‘I think a Friday afternoon drive may be just the thing. Wally, may we see you out?’

  FIVE

  Only when sitting in the passenger seat of her roadster did I wonder how well Edith could see through her glasses. Taking the Red Car never gave me white knuckles. As we weaved and bobbed through Friday afternoon traffic, I prattled away to keep my mind off the possibility of imminent death. ‘Mr Leisen isn’t exactly Ronald Colman in the charm department.’

  ‘He can be … curt,’ Edith said diplomatically. ‘But that’s because he knows what he wants. He began as a costume designer himself, on Mr DeMille’s pictures. Always put women in clogs, for some reason. He then became an art director. You remember that enormous tapestry Douglas Fairbanks slid down in Robin Hood? Mitch’s work. Made of burlap, to support Mr Fairbanks’s weight. Now Mitch is behind the camera himself, but he still feels capable of doing everyone else’s job.’

  ‘So his rudeness is only because he wears so many hats?’

  ‘Well, he has gotten more difficult since his heart attack. Happened the day he wrapped The Big Broadcast of 1938.’

  ‘At least he’s only directing one movie you’re working on.’

  ‘Yes.’ She fell silent. For a moment, I thought she was concentrating on the road. ‘He’s pushing to have me replaced. Mitch thinks Paramount needs someone with less conservative taste running the Wardrobe Department.’

  I braced myself as Edith veered in front of a bread truck. ‘That’s crazy. You’re not conservative.’

  ‘I think of myself as someone who dresses characters. You shouldn’t be aware of the costume, only the performance. That’s not quite the way Travis worked.’ Travis being Travis Banton, Edith’s predecessor at Paramount, who had a flair for the flamboyant. ‘Or Mitch, for that matter. Or Natalie Visart, who does Mr DeMille’s pictures and could conceivably replace me. Although I doubt Mr DeMille would allow it.’ Edith smiled in her customary fashion, without revealing any teeth. ‘I imagine Mitch wouldn’t be keen on the prospect, either. Natalie is his mistress.’

  ‘An illicit affair between two costume designers? Who dresses for who?’

  Edith’s smile stretched as wide as I’d seen it go. ‘It’s “whom”, dear. And I believe they’re undressing for each other.’

  ‘Why, Miss Head!’

  ‘My apologies. It must be a sign Mitch’s lobbying to have me fired is wearing on my nerves. Normally I’d never repeat the rumor he’s involved with Natalie. Among other people.’

  Edith’s last three words invited further questions. But then she nearly plowed into a battered jitney, and any subsequent queries flew from my mind.

  Clifton’s Brookdale Cafeteria, on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, was allegedly the biggest such eating establishment anywhere. The building itself made this claim, ‘World’s Largest’ bannered on one side of the entrance, opposite the posted hours of six in the morning to midnight. I wasn’t about to argue with any edifice, especially one that housed a business so vital to the city’s well-being. Brookdale and its sister Clifton’s eatery a few blocks away on Olive were billed as ‘The Cafeterias of the Golden Rule’, where patrons could ‘Pay What You Wish’.

  ‘I haven’t been here before,’ Edith said.

  ‘Brace yourself. Hope you brought your appetite.’

  Inside, we were assailed not by competing odors but by two entire olfactory landscapes. Underlying the expected scents of the kitchen, made denser by the sheer volume of food being prepared, was a rustic, outdoorsy aroma, courtesy of Clifton’s interior, designed to look like one of California’s mighty forests had set up house. The support columns had been fashioned to resemble redwoods, some of them bearing cages containing live canaries. An elaborate mural took up the arboreal theme. Counterfeit crags climbed the walls around it, the décor laboring to create the impression of dining al fresco on a mountaintop.

  ‘Good heavens,’ Edith said. ‘Do I hear a waterfall?’

  ‘Unless that’s the creek. They have both.’

  Clifton’s was the brainchild of Clifford Clinton, one of the few angels in a city named for them. Having witnessed extreme poverty firsthand in China during a peripatetic youth, he made it his mission in life to feed the poor – and anyone else who was hungry. The cafeteria’s breakfast couldn’t be beat; for a quarter you got bacon, eggs, potatoes, toast, jelly, coffee, and eight cents change. Clinton knew some potential patrons didn’t have the quarter, so he offered simpler fare for a nickel. Those subsistence meals came complete with Jell-O, because Clinton understood that those in need required a treat more than the rest of us. And if you didn’t have a sou in your pocket, you could still eat for free, with other diners throwing in more than their share to make up the difference.

  Clinton also strove to make Los Angeles less daunting, his establishments offering free sightseeing trips and friendship exchanges for newcomers. He also inserted himself into the city’s civic life in more meaningful ways. He’d spearheaded the 1938 recall effort that ousted Mayor Frank Shaw, carrying on e
ven after a bomb exploded inside his home. Throughout, he continued to provide sustenance, both physical and emotional, to all who needed it.

  But honestly, it was the Jell-O that made me an admirer.

  Edith and I turned in tight circles, searching for Baird and Vollmer. A man approached, his ramrod posture compensating for his threadbare black suit. Beneath a gray mane was the curiously unlined face of one who had spent his years showing as little emotion as possible.

  ‘Pardon me, would you ladies be Lillian and Edith?’

  We replied in the affirmative.

  ‘I am Rudiger Vollmer.’ His accent was less pronounced in person.

  While we waited for the last member of our quartet, Edith asked Vollmer if he still worked in pictures. ‘In a sense. I have a repair shop not far from here. Cameras. Almost ten years now. A long time since my first position, back at UFA in Germany. I’ve lost touch with my friends from the film industry except for a few, like—’

  ‘Rudi! Thank God!’ If the interjection coming bang on cue hadn’t alerted me that we were in for a theatrical experience, Clarence Baird’s attire would have done the job. His jacket, styled like a frock coat with its tight fit and unpadded shoulders, gave off an air of courtliness as well as the distinct tang of mothballs, intensified by the afternoon’s heat. He looked as though he could have emerged from a carriage into a nineteenth-century London fog. I assumed the jacket had been a costume on a film Baird had worked on, salvaged for his personal wardrobe. He stood well over six feet, waving his arms as he walked so it looked like he was swimming through the gathering diners. His thinning hair had gone white, revealing the bright pinkness of his scalp. ‘It’s a madhouse as usual. I hope we’ll get a table.’

  Vollmer made the introductions, Baird nodding through them and gazing into the dining room as if he’d seen this part of the picture already. It took me a moment to notice the much younger man standing behind him. A moon-faced collegiate type, in a serviceable summer suit. Realizing Baird wasn’t about to present him to the group, he banked the spark of excitement in his eyes and stepped closer to Edith. When he spoke, I recognized his voice from my telephone call to Baird. ‘Pardon me, Miss Head. I know your work and I wanted to—’