The actor is required to dramatize his emotions. He mines everything: the moment, the past—anything he can conjure to deliver the meaning of the words in the script. The job of acting is to feel. An actor displays his emotional template in full view for all to see, and a director to judge. It’s in the bubble of vulnerability that chemistry is born. Chemistry is what makes a movie work, or at least makes the story believable to the patron who took her seat in hopes of sparking her own passion or escaping her lack of it.
Gable knew it, and so did Loretta. This rhythm between them, their ability to communicate with one another in a way that was interesting and illuminating, was the very thing that made them valuable commodities to the studio. It was obvious to both of them that there was something between them. Loretta, however, did not want to make it personal.
Gable sat down on the floor next to her. The logs crackled; a blue glow under the grate fed blazing orange flames that jumped high into the flue like ribbons.
“Do you like it up here?”
“It’s growing on me.”
“You like camping?”
“I’m not the outdoorsy type. I could never figure out how to get warm in front of a fire. If you face it, you burn up in the front and your backside is freezing. You turn and warm your backside, and your front freezes.”
Gable laughed. “You have to keep moving.”
Loretta could see Gable clearly. Even in bright light, he had a darkness, a depth of tone and hue that was perfect for the cinema, for the shading of black-and-white film. His forehead was etched with deep lines—thought lines, she imagined. She wondered if he was as intelligent as he seemed, or if that was simply the years between them. His experience trumped hers in every conceivable way.
“How about you? Are you as perfect as everyone tells me you are?” Loretta asked.
“Who are you talking to?” Gable smiled. “I make the same mistakes over and over again.”
“If you know better, why do you make them?”
“Because I’m thick. Or maybe I’m just human. Life isn’t a class where you can get a perfect score. It seems to me you have to keep trying.”
“Maybe you should pray about it.”
“I’m not a believer.”
“Were you baptized?”
“Catholic.”
“And it didn’t take?”
“Couldn’t. My mother died when I was a baby. If you’re going to get religion, you get it from your mother.”
Loretta nodded. Her mother, with her conversion to Catholicism, was faithful, but she also felt she owed the church. A priest had suggested she get into the boardinghouse business, and had helped her with a loan to start one. If she ever had a lapse of faith, it wasn’t apparent to her children. She walked in gratitude and expected her children to do the same.
Gladys Young Belzer had never gotten a break, which made Loretta value her own. Gladys had worked hard at the boardinghouse, and no job was beneath her—she cooked and scrubbed and ironed and cleaned as though every gleaming surface was a reflection of her own sterling character. When she remarried, she did so to benefit her daughters and son, knowing that a proper marriage in a pillared church gave her family stability and placed them on a moral high ground, which in Gladys’s eyes would keep them above the tawdry aspects of show business. As determined as she was to take care of her children, she knew that giving them a traditional structure would send the message that she had a fine family, deserving of respect. When a single mother is raising daughters, nothing is more important than that.
When her first husband walked out, Gladys did not delude herself. She didn’t delude herself or the children that John Earle Young would come to his senses, return home, and resume his responsibilities by earning an honest paycheck to care for his family. Instead, she leveled with her children, telling them that she would need their help in order to stay together as a family.
Fear drove the Young children to be loyal to one another, but love was the glue. They had to study, behave, and work hard; their father wasn’t going to return to keep them safe or provide security. Gladys was all they had. Their mother promised them that she would put them first and ensure their happiness. She told her daughters they were blessed with beauty and talent—and that it wasn’t just luck, but a gift.
Gladys encouraged her children to honor answered prayers, and pay attention to the signs that would lead them to prosperity. The hand of God had placed them in a house across the street from Lasky Studios, and that too was a sign. A dollar-a-day paycheck as extras from the studio from each of the girls placed in a common kitty would provide handsomely for their survival, and the weekly rent collected from the boarders would do the rest.
For Gladys, there were no accidents; only the twists, turns, and sudden sharp corners of destiny determined by prayer and hard work would write the family story. She believed those who were good were blessed, and if blessed, could handle any challenge. Poverty was a temporary condition that could change from a Monday to a Friday if every room in the boardinghouse were full, and if the guests paid on time.
Loretta wasn’t going to be a working actress, a model, or a day player who waited patiently to be chosen for background, then stood on the same line that night to receive her pay. She was going to be great—mentally sharp, physically perfect, and spiritually bound, believing that this holy trinity of show business attributes would in time turn her into a movie star. Loretta would learn how to choose the best roles for her skill set and, beyond that, make certain whatever movie she was in reflected the values her mother had inculcated within her. Loretta also learned not to count on a man to take care of her, her mother, or her family. The starlet’s first marriage had made this painfully clear. Gladys had been devastated when Loretta eloped, and since then the mother and daughter talked things through when it came to romance, instead of keeping secrets.
Loretta was curious about Clark’s mother. She believed a man’s relationship with his mother determined his point of view about women. She had learned from Grant Withers that a mother who abandons her son sets in motion the worst qualities in him as a husband. If she had known about Grant’s mother before she married him, she would never have eloped in the first place.
“What was she like? Your mother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your father never talked about her?”
Gable smiled. “He wasn’t the type.”
Gable reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He carried the flat style, like an envelope, made of fine, oxblood leather. It was neither new nor old, but Loretta noticed he took care of it: the wallet was neat, the bills organized. The money was arranged in numerical order, with crisp one-dollar bills resting on the fives, and so on.
Loretta couldn’t help but compare Gable to Grant Withers. Withers had kept his money loose, tucked in his shirtsleeve, crumpled in coat pockets, as if it mattered little and meant even less. Withers disregarded money, and therefore he was always searching for it, patting his pants pockets, jingling random coins, hoping to find some treasure.
Gable thumbed through his wallet in search of something. Bits of paper were neatly folded in the sleeve. Gable had large hands, but his fingers were tapered, the nail beds deep, the nails themselves clipped straight across and square. In her opinion, they were exquisite hands. She figured he was handy, being an outdoorsman and all, but there was also art in them, a craftsman’s elegance.
Gable pulled a small black-and-white photograph out of the wallet and handed it to Loretta. A pretty woman of around twenty, in a cotton voile dress trimmed in white piping, smiled at the camera. Her black hair, parted neatly on the side, extended down to her waist in a single shiny braid. At the tip end of the braid, she had tied a white ribbon. “This is my mother,” he said, his voice breaking.
“She’s lovely,” Loretta said. “You look like her.”
“It’s the only picture I have of her.”
“What was her name?”
“Adelin
e.”
Loretta gave the photograph back to Gable, who returned it to its place in the wallet.
“Did your father ever remarry?”
“A nice woman named Jenny.”
“She was good to you?”
“She read to me. Was forever giving me books.”
“You’re a reader?”
“I like the classics. Shakespeare.”
“Well.”
“Dickens. Melville. O. Henry.” Gable shook his head. “You thought I was an ape.”
“No, not at all. I just didn’t think you’d be a reader—you hunt, you fish, you take apart engines.”
“How do you think I learned how to take apart an engine? I read a manual.”
“That’s different from literature.”
“Not really. A poem is just a set of instructions. Tells you how to live.”
“That’s lovely.”
“How to love.” Gable moved closer to Loretta.
“You’re a married man, Mr. Gable.”
“I’m pretty lousy at it.”
“You should try to do better.”
“I am.”
“Not with me, you sap, with your wife.”
“Do you always tell everybody what to do?”
“I’m a little bossy.”
“A little?”
Loretta laughed. “Sometimes things are simple.”
“They’re never simple.”
“But they are. There’s right and wrong.”
“And in between them is a mighty river. Ever been fly fishing?”
“No.”
“The river is never what it seems. Now you can look at that river, and see the stones on the surface, and think, The water’s shallow. I can handle it. I can make it across. I’ll just stay right on those rocks and get to the other side. And then you get out there, and pretty soon you’re up to your waist. The stone, it turns out, is an old volcanic plate that goes so deep, there’s a mountain under that river that you couldn’t know was there. There’s an undertow. The surface seems calm, but it’s only there to trick you. There are deep pits in the rock, so deep the force of the water pulls you in and under. The water is now raging, and you didn’t plan on it. You’re doing the right thing, you’re trying to get to the other side, but you couldn’t know what you’d find when you got out into the middle of the river. That’s the mystery. You can do everything just right, and the river moves through anyway, and it takes you with it. When you go deep, that’s where the trouble lies.”
“I’d turn back,” she blurted.
“What if you can’t? What if the river is what it’s supposed to be, and you have to go forward?”
“I’d try to do the right thing.”
“You can’t know what you’re going to feel, and you can’t control what you feel. You only know what you know.“
“The way I was raised, that’s the devil talking.”
“Or maybe an angel who’s been sent to save you.”
“That sounds like a real line to me, Mr. Gable.” Loretta gathered up her script.
Gable watched her sort the pages in order and stack them neatly with a rap on the table. “May I see you home?” he asked.
“I think I can find the second floor.”
“It’s good manners to walk a lady home.”
“Okay, okay, good point. I would not want to deprive you of your courtly gesture.”
Gable followed Loretta up the stairs. This time he took in the sway of her hips and her movement on the stairs, the same way he had observed the hotel maid.
Loretta spun on her heels. “I know what you’re up to.”
Gable held his hands up innocently. “You have eyes in the back of your head?”
“Don’t need ’em.”
“I’m appreciative of beauty.”
“Oh, that’s it.”
“I’m a simple man.”
“I’ll say.”
“I can’t help it, Gretchen.”
“That’s too bad. Mrs. Gable will be very sorry to hear that.”
“Why do you bring up my wife?”
“Because she’s your wife.”
“And I need reminding.”
“Exactly.”
“Since you’re so obsessed with Mrs. Gable—”
Loretta gave Gable a playful shove. “I am not.”
“You’re such an expert about my situation, so indulge me. What happened with Mr. Withers? On the level, tell me what happened.”
“He drank, and I wasn’t ready for that.”
“What did you think marriage was going to be?”
“Happy. He was handsome and sharp. He dressed like a duke. He courted me. He was an actor, and I liked his work. He was good at it. It came naturally, so I assumed that all those elegant gents he played in pictures were real.”
“You’re just like the girl who sits in the balcony. She thinks it’s real.”
“I’ve lived it, so I know it isn’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t like to think about it. I am like the girl in the balcony. I was devastated when I found out the truth.” Loretta fished her key out of her pocket. “Good night, Mr. Gable.”
Gable stood next to her as she unlocked the door. He leaned against the frame. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
Clark leaned down and kissed Loretta on her forehead. This was something Loretta’s father might have done had he stayed. Gable was twelve years older than she was; maybe he was feeling protective, or this was his way of making her comfortable before the cameras rolled in the morning.
“Good night, Gretchen.”
It was cold in Loretta’s room. The ruffles on the satin bedskirts were like ribbon candy, stiff to the touch. The maid had left a pot of fresh snow water boiling in the kettle on the hearth. Loretta changed into her nightgown. She covered the warming kettle in a flannel sleeve and placed it under the covers. She brushed her teeth, snapped her retainer in place, and brushed her hair.
Loretta threw another log on the fire, and soon the flames were roaring, the bits of dry wood crackling and spitting small blue sparks. Loretta placed three lumps of black coal on to the burning logs, where they glistened like black diamonds as the flames engulfed them.
Loretta stood there for a long time, trying to warm herself. She rubbed her hands together.
“Come on, Gretch.” She jumped in place—anything to make heat, anything to shake off what she was feeling for Clark Gable. She had flirted with him, joked around, but it was all for fun, all for the movie.
She admonished herself, shook her head and rejected the thought of him. This was a set crush, that’s all. It was simple. It was sex. She found him wildly attractive, and they were stuck on a mountaintop. She could control this situation. She was not going to let anything happen; she refused to fall for a man who belonged to another. Again. She would keep this situation platonic. He was fun, she liked flirting with him, liked being around him, and nowhere—not in any sermon, church, or penance given by a priest—had that ever been a sin. That’s what she would hang on to—it was just a friendship. And who doesn’t need a friend?
There was a knock at the door.
Gable stood in the dim hallway holding a blanket folded neatly. “Thought you could use another blanket.”
“Thank you.” She smiled and then realized she was wearing her retainer. “See you in the morning.” Loretta closed the door.
Gable pushed it open before she could lock it and looked at her with a smile that made her heart beat faster.
He made her so nervous, she blurted, “I wear a retainer. If I don’t wear it, I have buck teeth. The studio wanted to pull them, and Mama said no, so I have to wear this thing for the rest of my life.”
Gable laughed. “Last summer I got sick and they pulled mine. I have a few left.”
“Doesn’t look like it hurt your career. Or that smile.”
“You can buy teeth.” Gable stood in the doorway. Just as he filled the screen in the movie theaters, he filled the doorway to her room.
He leaned against the doorjamb and folded his arms across his chest. She swore he was holding the entire building up, maybe even all of Mount Baker. The fire threw a golden glow on him. The greatest cinematographers in Hollywood could not have possibly lit him better in this moment. Whatever this man was, Loretta thought he looked part god in the firelight, and she hated him for it.
“Thank you for the blanket. See you tomorrow.” She smiled, lips together, no teeth, no gleam from the silver bands of her retainer to blind him. She pushed the door closed.
He pushed it back open. “Is this good night, Gretchen?”
“Yes, Mr. Gable.”
Loretta pushed the door closed, and locked it.
Gable heard the click and chuckled.
7
Buck had been living in a dog shed off the back of the kitchen of the dining hall at the Mount Baker Inn until director Wellman decided that it was inhumane. At night the temperature on the mountain would drop to ten degrees below zero, which evidently was too cold even for a Saint Bernard.
Buck was granted permission to stay in the hotel with his trainer. The crew found the dog much easier to handle once he had moved inside. Gable figured that Buck had somehow seen the rushes, decided he was a star rivaling Rin Tin Tin, and renegotiated his contract to include posh digs for the duration.
The hotel was remote, cold, and—now that Zanuck had ordered the plows—noisy. A group of local workingmen had been hired to keep the road clear between the exteriors and the hotel. The workers plowed incessantly in shifts, covering miles of road in trucks that ground surface ice and cleared snow from morning until night.
Mount Baker was 5,000 feet above sea level, and while Darryl Zanuck loved to brag that it was the highest location ever used on a Hollywood picture, he left out that it was also deadly, and nearly impossible to navigate. Wellman certainly was the best director for the job. Nothing scared him; no climate, no actor, and no stunt was too great a challenge. He made a personal mission out of professional challenges. He wanted to win.