As the idealized Katherine and Webster caress each other, the voice-over says, “ ‘I fastened the back of her enticing Valentino frock, offering my arm to guide her from the bedchamber, down the steps of her elegant residence to the busy street, where I might engage a passing conveyance.’ ”
The idealized lovers seem to float from the boudoir down the town house stairs, hand in hand, floating through the foyer and down the porch steps to the sidewalk. In contrast to their languid movements, the street traffic rushes past with ominous roars, motortrucks and taxicabs, blurred with speed.
“ ‘As the stream of vehicles whizzed past us,’ ” the voice-over reads, “ ‘almost invisible in their high velocity, I sank to one knee on the curb.’ ”
The idealized Webb kneels before the idealized Miss Kathie.
“ ‘Taking her limpid hand, I ask if she—the most glorious queen of theatrical culture—would consider wedding me, a mere presumptuous mortal.…’ ”
In soft-focus slow motion, the idealized Webb lifts the hand of the idealized Katherine until the long, smooth fingers meet his pursed lips. He plants a kiss on the fingers, the back of the hand, the palm.
The voice-over continues, “ ‘At that moment of our tremendous happiness, my beloved Katherine—the only great ideal of the twentieth century—stumbled from the treacherous curbstone …’ ”
In real time, we see the flash of a chrome bumper and radiator grille. We hear brakes screech and tires squeal. A scream rings out.
“ ‘… falling,’ ” the voice-over reads, “ ‘directly into the deadly path of a speeding omnibus.’ ”
Still reading from Love Slave, Miss Kathie’s voice-over says, “ ‘The end.’ ”
Bark, moo, meow … Final curtain.
Growl, roar, oink … Fade to black.
ACT II, SCENE TWO
Webb planned to kill her on this night. Tonight they had dinner reservations at the Cub Room with Alla Nazimova, Omar Sharif, Paul Robeson and … Lillian Hellman. Their plans had been to spend the afternoon together, dress late and catch a taxicab to the restaurant. Miss Kathie hands me the manuscript, telling me to sneak it back to its hiding place in Webb’s suitcase, under his shirts, but on top of his shoes, tucked tight into one corner.
This scene begins with a very long shot of the chess pavilion atop the Kinderberg rocks. From this distance my Miss Kathie and I appear as two minute figures wandering down a path from the pavilion, dwarfed by the background of skyscrapers, lost in the huge landscape, but our voices sounding distinct and clear. Around us, a hush has fallen over the din and sirens of the city.
Walking in the distance, the pair of us are distinct as the only two figures that remain together. Always in the center of this very, very long shot. Around us, single, distant figures jog, skate, stroll, but Miss Kathie and I move across the visual field at the same even pace, two dots traveling in a straight line as if we were a single entity, walking in identical slow strides. In tandem. Our steps the same length.
As our twin pinprick figures cross the wide shot, Miss Kathie’s voice says, “We can’t go to the police.”
In response, my voice asks, Why not?
“And we mustn’t mention this to anyone in the press, either,” says Miss Kathie.
Her voice continues, “I will not be humiliated by a scandal.”
It’s not a crime to write a story about someone’s demise, she says, especially not a movie star, a public figure. Of course, Miss Kathie could file a restraining order alleging Webb had abused her or made threats, but that would make this sordid episode a matter of public record. An aging film queen suckered into dyeing her hair, dieting and nightclub hopping, she’d look like the doddering fool from the Thomas Mann novella.
Even if Webb didn’t, the tabloids would slay her.
She and I, almost invisible in the distance, continue to move through the width of this long, long shot. Around us the park drops into twilight. Still, the paired specks of us move at the same steady speed, no more fast or more slow. As we walk, the camera tracks, always keeping us at the very center of the shot.
A clock chimes seven times. The clock tower in the park zoo.
The dinner reservations are for eight o’clock.
“Webb has written the whole dreadful book,” says the voice of Miss Kathie. “Even if I confront him, even if I avoid tonight’s conspiracy, his plot might not end here.”
Among the ambient background sounds, we hear a passing bus, a roaring reminder of my Miss Kathie being crushed to bloody sequins. Possibly only an hour or two from now. Her movie-star auburn hair and perfect teeth, white and gleaming as the dentures of Clark Gable, would be lodged in a grinning chrome radiator grille. Her violet eyes would burst from their painted sockets and stare up from the gutter at a mob of her appalled fans.
The evening grows darker as our tiny figures move toward the edge of the park, nearing Fifth Avenue. At one instant, all the streetlights blink on, bright.
In that same instant, one tiny figure stops walking while the second figure takes a few more steps, moving ahead.
The voice of Miss Kathie says, “Wait.” She says, “We have to see where this is going. We’ll have to read the second draft and the third and the fourth drafts, to see how far Webb will go to complete his awful book.”
I must sneak this draft back into his suitcase, and every day, as Miss Kathie foils each subsequent murder attempt, we need to look for the next draft so we can anticipate the next plot. Until we can think of a solution.
As the traffic light changes, we cross Fifth.
Cut to the pair of us approaching Miss Kathie’s town house, a medium shot as we ascend the front steps to the door. From the street, in the second-floor window of her boudoir, we see that a hairy hand holds the curtains open a crack and bright brown eyes watch us arrive. From within the house, we hear footsteps thunder down the stairs. The front door swings open, and Mr. Westward stands in the light of the foyer. He wears the double-breasted Brooks Brothers tuxedo cited in the last chapter of Love Slave. An orchid in his lapel buttonhole. The two ends of a white bow tie hang, looped and loose around his collar, and Webster Carlton Westward III says, “We’ll need to hurry to stay on schedule.” Looking down on us, he holds each end of his tie and leans forward, saying, “Would it kill you to help me with this?”
Those hands, the soft tools he would use to commit murder. Behind that smile, the cunning mind that had planned this betrayal. To add insult to injury, the lies he’d written about my Miss Kathie and her sexual adventures, they would eventually be cherry-picked by Frazier Hunt of Photoplay, Katherine Albert of Modern Screen magazine, Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune, Jack Grant of Screen Book, Sheilah Graham, all the various low-life bottom feeders of Confidential and every succeeding biographer of the future. These tawdry, soft, sordid fictions would petrify and fossilize to become diamond-hard, carved-stone facts for all perpetuity. A salacious lie will always trump a noble truth.
Miss Kathie’s violet eyes waft to meet my eyes.
A bus roars past in the street, shaking the ground with its weight and trailing the stink of diesel exhaust. Around us the air swirls, gritty with dust and heavy with the threat of imminent death.
Then Miss Kathie steps up to the stoop where the Webster specimen waits. Standing on her tiptoes, she begins to knot the white bow tie. Her movie-star face a mere breath from his own. For this moment and for the immediate future, placing herself as far as possible from the constant, marauding stream of omnibuses.
And Webb, the evil, lying bastard, looks down and plants a kiss on her forehead.
ACT II, SCENE THREE
We cut to the interior of a lavish Broadway theater. The opening mise-en-scène includes the proscenium arch, the stage curtain rising within the arch, below that the combed heads and brass instruments of musicians within the orchestra pit. The conductor, Woody Herman, raises his baton, and the air fills with a rousing overture by Oscar Levant, arrangements by André Previn. Additional
musical numbers by Sigmund Romberg and Victor Herbert. On the piano, Vladimir Horowitz. As the curtain rises, we see a chorus line which includes Ruth Donnelly, Barbara Merrill, Alma Rubens, Zachary Scott and Kent Smith doing fan kicks aboard the deck of the battleship USS Arizona, designed by Romain de Tirtoff and moored center stage. The Japanese admirals Isoroku Yamamoto and Hara Tadaichi are danced by Kinuyo Tanaka and Tora Teje, respectively. Andy Clyde does a furious buck-and-wing as Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, the official first Japanese prisoner of war. Anna May Wong tap-dances a solo in the part of Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, and Tex Ritter fills in for General Douglas MacArthur. With Emiko Yakumo and Tia Xeo as Lieutenant Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki and Captain Minoru Genda, the principal dancers among the Japanese junior officers.
Choreography by moo, cluck, bark … Léonide Massine.
Staging by tweet, bray, meow … W. MacQueen Pope.
As the orchestra pounds away, the USS Oklahoma explodes near the waterline and begins to sink stage right. Burning fuel oil races stage left, moving upstage to ignite the USS West Virginia. Downstage, a Japanese Nakajima torpedo lances into the hull of the USS California.
Japanese Zeros strafe the production number, riddling the chorus line with bullets. Aichi dive bombers plunge into Pearl White and Tony Curtis, prompting an explosion of red corn syrup, while the cruising periscopes of Japanese midget submarines cut back and forth behind the footlights.
As the Arizona begins to keel over, we see Katherine Kenton clamber to the position of port-side gun, wrestling the body of a dead gunner’s mate away from the seat. Embroidered across one side of her chest, the olive-drab fabric reads: PFC HELLMAN. My Miss Kathie drags the dead hero aside, laying both her palms open against his chest. As grenades explode shrapnel around her, Miss Kathie’s lips mutter a silent prayer. The eyelids of the dead sailor, played by Jackie Coogan, the eyelashes flutter. The young man opens his eyes, blinking; cradled now in Miss Kathie’s arms, he looks up into her famous violet eyes and says, “Am I in heaven?” He says, “Are you … God?”
The Zeros screaming past, the Arizona sinking beneath them into the oily, fiery water of Pearl Harbor, Miss Kathie laughs. Kissing the boy on his lips, she says, “Close but no cigar … I’m Lillian Hellman.”
Before another note from the orchestra, Miss Kathie leaps to slam an artillery round into the massive deck gun. Wheeling the enormous barrel, she tracks a diving Aichi bomber, aligning the crosshairs of her gun sight. Her sailor whites artfully stained and shredded by Adrian Adolph Greenberg, her bleeding wounds suggested by sparkling patches of crimson sequins and rhinestones sewn around each bullet hole. Singing the opening bars of her big song, Miss Kathie fires the shell, blasting the enemy aircraft into a blinding burst of papier-mâché.
From offscreen a voice shouts, “Stop!” A female voice shouts, cutting through the violins and French horns, the rockets and machine-gun fire, shouting, “For fuck’s sake, stop!” A woman comes stomping down the center aisle of the theater, one arm lifted, wielding a script rolled as tight as a police officer’s billy club.
The orchestra grinds to silence. The singers stop, their voices trailing off. The dancers slow to a standstill, and the fighter jets hang, stalled, limp in midair, from invisible wires.
From the stage apron, in the reverse angle, we see this shouting woman is Lillian Hellman herself as she says, “You’re ruining history! For the love of Anna Q. Nilsson, I happen to be right-handed!”
In this same reverse angle, we see that the theater is almost empty. King Vidor and Victor Fleming sit in the fifth row with their heads huddled together, whispering. Farther back, I sit in the empty auditorium next to Terrence Terry, both of us balancing infants on our respective laps. Clustered on the floor around our chairs, other foundlings squirm and drool in wicker baskets. Chubby pink hands shake various rattles, these kinder occupying most of the surrounding seats.
“You’d better hope this show flops,” says Terrence Terry, bouncing a gurgling orphan on his knee. “By the way, where is our lethal Lothario?”
I tell him that Webb would have to truly hate Miss Kathie after what happened yesterday.
Onstage, Lilly Hellman shouts, “Everybody, listen! Let’s start over.” Hellman shouts, “Let’s take it from the part where the kamikaze fighters of the Japanese Imperial Army swoop low over Honolulu in order to rain their deadly fiery cargo of searing death on Constance Talmadge.”
The Webster specimen is currently undergoing treatment at Doctors Hospital. Just to escape the town house, Miss Kathie’s going into rehearsal, and Webster Carlton Westward III is recovering from minor lacerations to his arms and torso.
Terry says, “Fingernail scratches?”
At the house, I say, the nurses keep arriving. The nuns and social workers. The fresh castoff infants continue to be delivered, and Miss Kathie declines to choose. In the past few days, each baby seems less like a blessing and more like an adorable time bomb. No matter how much you love and cuddle one, it still might grow up to become Mercedes McCambridge. Regardless of all the affection you shower on a child, it still might break your heart by becoming Sidney Skolsky. All of your nurturing and worry and careful attention might turn out another Noel Coward. Or saddle humanity with a new Alain Resnais. You need only look at Webb and see how no amount of Miss Kathie’s love will redeem him.
Wrapped around one wrist, the foundling I hold wears a beaded bracelet reading, UNCLAIMED BOY INFANT NUMBER THIRTY-FOUR.
It’s ludicrous, the idea of me raising a child, not while I still have my Miss Kathie to parent. A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy for a role you’re planning to leave. You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret you want future critics to say you played the character better.
“Don’t look at me,” Terry says, juggling an orphan. “I’m busy trying to raise myself.”
Despite repeatedly sidestepping possible death by bus accident and dinner at the Cub Room with Lilly Hellman, Miss Katie has invited Webb to share her town house—so that we might better monitor future drafts of his book-in-progress. She confessed, knowing now how Webster was actually a psychotic killer, a ruthless scheming slayer, now their sex life was more passionate than ever.
It was Webb who brought this stage project to Miss Kathie, gave her the script to read and told her she’d be ideal as the brash, ballsy Hellman seduced by Sammy Davis Jr. and parachuted onto Waikiki Beach with nothing but a bottle of sunblock and orders to stem the Imperial Army’s advance. Along the way she falls in love with Joi Lansing. According to Webb, this starring role had Tony Award written all over it.
According to Terrence Terry, the Webster specimen was merely grooming my Miss Kathie. These past few years, she’d fallen into obscurity. First, refusing stage and film projects. Second, neglecting her gray hair and weight. A generation of young people were growing up never hearing the name Katherine Kenton, oblivious to Miss Kathie’s body of work. No, it wouldn’t do for her to die at this point in time, not before she’d made a successful comeback. Therefore, Webster Carlton Westward III coaxed her to slim down; in all likelihood he’d bully her into a surgeon’s office, where she’d submit to having any new wrinkles or sags erased from her face.
If this new show was a hit, if it put my Miss Kathie back on top, introducing her to a new legion of fans, that would be the ideal time to complete his final chapter. His “lie-ography” would hit stores the same day her newspaper obituary hit the street. The same week her new Broadway show opened to rave reviews.
But not this week, I tell Terry.
Daubing with the hem of my starched maid’s apron, I wipe at the face of the infant I hold. I lean near the floor and pick out a thin sheaf of papers tucked beneath the diaper of a nearby baby. Offering the printed pages to Terry, I ask if he wants to read the second draft of Love Slave. Just the closing chapter; here’s the blueprint for Miss Kathie’s most recent brush with death.
“How is it our homicidal hunk has landed himse
lf in the hospital?” Terry says.
And I toss the newest, revised final chapter at his feet.
Onstage, Lilly demonstrates to Miss Kathie the correct way to tour en l’air while slitting the throat of an enemy sentry.
Terry collects the pages. Still holding the orphan on his knee, he says, “Once upon a time …” He props the baby in the crook of one arm, leaning into its tiny face as if it were a radio microphone or a camera lens, any recording device in which to store his life. Speaking into this particular foundling, filling its hollow mind, filling its eyes and ears with the sound of his voice, Terry reads, “ ‘Perhaps it’s ironic, but no film critic, not Jack Grant nor Pauline Kael nor David Ogden Stewart, would ever tear Katherine to bloody shreds the way savage grizzly bears eventually would.…’ ”
ACT II, SCENE FOUR
In voice-over, we hear Terrence Terry reading from the revised final chapter of Love Slave. As we dissolve from the theater of the previous scene, we continue to hear the ambient sounds of the rehearsal: carpenters hammering scenery together, tap dancing, machine-gun fire, the dying screams of sailors burned alive, and Lillian Hellman. However, these noises fade as once more we see the soft-focus interior of Miss Kathie’s boudoir. We see Webster Carlton Westward III, shot from the waist up, his naked torso shining with sweat, as he lifts one hand to his nose, the fingers dripping wet, and inhales deeply, closing his eyes. His hands drop down, out of the shot, then rise, each hand gripping a slender ankle. Lifting the two feet to shoulder height, he holds them wide apart. Webb’s hips buck forward, then pull back, drive forward and pull back, while the voice-over reads, “ ‘… On the final day of Katherine Kenton’s life, I oh-so-gently nudged the prow of my aching love stick against the knotted folds of her forbidden passageway.…’ ”
Once again, the man and woman copulating are idealized versions of Webb and Miss Kathie, seen through heavy filters, their movements in slow motion, fluid, possibly even blurring.