As Loretta drove, she made a list of all the things she had given her daughter, starting with a close family: a loving grandmother, a slew of aunts and their wonderful husbands, and two younger brothers. Judy had grown up with a fine education, good friends, and a loving circle, an upbringing made complete by opportunities to travel and see the world in ways that Loretta had only dreamed of. Now that Judy was a mother herself, surely she understood the sacrifices Loretta had made—and even if she didn’t, Loretta was confident that her daughter would understand them in time. Maybe everything would be made right by Maria, Loretta’s granddaughter, who at six already had Judy’s keen mind and curiosity.
Loretta had always worked, and when she thought about the past, it was to retrieve a memory about something that had happened on a movie set—whether it was being berated by the director George FitzMorris, or laughing so hard with Jean Harlow that the director had to yell “Cut!” until the girls “got it out of their system,” or kissing Spencer Tracy for the first time on the set of Man’s Castle, the first kiss of her life that had meant something.
It was work that she thought about when she let her mind wander. Her children sustained her; they were the essence of her, as she and her brother and sisters had been for Gladys. Loretta did not question her devotion or the depth of her love for her children. It was the mighty river under the indestructible ship she had built by the labor of her own hands. Both the river and the ship belonged to her, and she to it. Her convictions about that were as deep as her faith.
Loretta ranked her achievements when she examined her conscience. The children were always first, then her career. Family and career, in that order, she believed. She had gotten into the movies to help her mother—but found bliss and challenge and artistic freedom and the integrity that comes from using one’s gifts. She had done her best, but believed most of the time that she had not measured up to her own high standards. That, Loretta decided, was the Catholic in her.
Loretta drove and drove that morning, off the freeway and into Woodland Hills, a sweet village in the San Fernando Valley. She rolled down the window, took off her hat, and leaned back in the seat. She would drive slowly, and then speed up, and when a gentleman passed in a blue Pontiac and shot her a look that said, You can’t drive, lady, she smiled back at him. He almost drove off the road when he realized who the bad driver was.
Loretta pulled off the road to a flower stand and purchased an enormous bouquet of gardenias and tuberoses. Somewhere in the fog of her deep memory, she recalled that Mae loved this combination. The woman who ran the stand recognized Loretta, and offered the flowers for free. Loretta paid anyway, and left her autograph on the canopy of the roadside stand.
Loretta drove past a manicured acreage, the sod was green and lush, hemmed by a fence. The entry drive revealed the Motion Picture Country House, a sprawling single-story Spanish-style building with a terra-cotta roof and a wide entrance, canopied from the sun.
It looked like a place that could easily accommodate a premiere, and the party that follows, but in fact this was a hospital and rest home for the folks who had worked in the movies—in front of the camera and behind it—during the silents, and then the talkies that gave birth to the golden age of Hollywood. For every senior citizen gaffer and electrician, there was a screenwriter and a leading lady or man, sharing a room, side by side. It was as if the artistic collaboration had not ended but instead was slowly seeping away in a swirl of glorious memories that abide old age. The facade of the home had just enough swank to remind the tenants of the glamorous industry they had built with their talents.
Loretta put on her hat before getting out of the car. She pulled on her gloves. She checked her lipstick in the mirror, and, satisfied, got out of the car with the bouquet of flowers.
Loretta entered the lobby of the Motion Picture Country House. The walls were lined with residents in wheelchairs, chatting with one another, reading the newspaper, or doing nothing at all, just sitting. But they weren’t alone; they were in the company of their peers. This comforted Loretta as she checked in.
As Loretta passed the old folks, one looked up and remembered her. She stopped and took the man’s hand when he reached for hers, and spent a moment talking with him. She pulled a rose out of the bouquet, snapped the stem off, and placed the flower in the man’s lapel. He beamed as he watched her go on her way.
She stopped at room 110 and peeked in. Sitting high in the bed, propped by pillows, was Mae Murray. Mae rested her hands on the half-moon hospital table that stretched across her bed. Her hair was white, as were the sheets, the blanket, and her simple dressing gown. Mae was almost eighty years old. She was completely made up, her bee-stung lips drawn on with orange pencil and filled in with pale coral lipstick. Her eyes were rimmed in the black kohl powder they used in the silents. Mae still possessed a version of that “it” quality. Loretta wanted to feast her eyes upon Mae and keep watching forever. Mae Murray was still a star.
Mae studied a yellow bird outside her window, fascinated.
“Mate-zee?” Loretta said softly.
Mae turned and looked at Loretta. She squinted, put on her thick eyeglasses, and studied her guest. “Gretchen?”
“It’s me!” Loretta went to her and put her arms around her.
“Are those for me?” Mae asked.
Loretta handed her the flowers.
Mae inhaled the scent. “Jesse Lasky used to send me a bouquet every Monday when I was shooting. Wasn’t that nice?”
“He was one of the good ones.”
“I’ll say.” Mae handed the flowers back to Loretta. “Please put them in water.”
Loretta went into the bathroom to look for a vase. There were few personal effects there, just towels stenciled with the regulation MPH and a toothbrush. She opened the cabinet over the sink. It was empty.
“There’s a vase in the closet there,” Mae said.
Loretta opened the closet. There were two cotton dressing gowns on hangers and a pair of foam bedroom slippers on the floor. Mae Murray didn’t even own a sweater. Loretta remembered a different closet, the one in Mae’s Beverly Hills mansion. It was deep, shelves on either side, drawers with crystal pulls, dresses hung in a row on velour hangers, arranged by color. Hooks draped with beads, satin shoes displayed on raked shelves, gowns made of tulle, and coats made of sable and fox. There was a carpeted runway made of plush silk wool in Mae’s signature lavender, at the end of it, a full-length mirror with three panels and a velvet stool, overhead a skylight that beamed a funnel of light where Mae would stand after dressing and check her outfit from every angle.
It was bliss to play dress-up in Mae’s closet at the height of her fame as a movie star. Carlene and Loretta would write plays, then choose their costumes from Mae’s wardrobe. They wore gowns trimmed in marabou feathers, delighting Mae as they dragged the trains of the skirts behind them while teetering on sequin-covered high heels.
Loretta recalled pulling on Mae’s evening gloves, which smelled as sweet as fresh gardenias. She used to snoop through Mae’s evening bags after a night on the town. Loretta would find a small mirror, a pack of Camels, and matchbooks from all the glamorous places that Mae would frequent: Ciro’s, Mocambo, Romanoff’s. The boxes of matches were as artful as any memento from any fancy place, and sometimes Mae wrote on them—a phone number, the title of a script going around town that she might consider, or the name of a new hairdresser, fresh from Paris, who was making the studio rounds to find a job.
Loretta remembered the opulence. She could picture Mae’s bedroom suite, the satin bedspread with ruffles of palest lilac, so pale it was almost silver. She and Carlene had played hide-and-seek in the matching draperies and danced on the plush carpet dyed to match the spread and the curtains. She remembered Mae’s organza dressing gowns in the same shade, and entering the bedroom to greet Mae in the morning, thinking she looked like a cream puff in the window of Gladman’s Bakery in Beverly Hills.
Loretta was devastated for Mae,
but did not show it. She found a thick, plain glass vase on the shelf and went to the bathroom to fill it.
“They’re my absolute favorite flowers, Gretchen. Thank you.” Mae smiled.
Loretta took a seat next to Mae.
“Are you still dancing?” Mae asked.
“Not so much.”
“I believe in dance. It’s the foundation for everything. If you can’t move, you can’t act, you know.”
“That’s true.”
“Do you mind that I still call you Gretchen?”
“Oh, no. I love it. It reminds me of the days when we were girls.”
“I named you Loretta, you know.”
Loretta nodded. The actress Colleen Moore had actually given Loretta her new name, in a scheme hatched with the director Mervyn LeRoy. But if Mae wanted to take credit, that was fine with Loretta. She smiled, thinking success had many mothers in Hollywood, and credit was always there for the taking, even now. Still, Loretta was grateful to her benefactor. She took Mae’s hand. “There would have been no Loretta Young without you. You gave me music lessons, dance classes. Carlene and I loved to stay with you at the house in Bel Air.”
“It was grand. You should bring Carlene by sometime.”
“I will.”
“Remember the swing?” Mae smiled.
“You had the only house in Bel Air with a swing in the front yard.”
“Why hide it in the back? We were players, weren’t we? We knew how to play.”
“You taught me where to look when the camera was rolling.”
“Oh, you came by that naturally.”
“No, everything took practice.”
“Practice over time becomes skill, dear. That’s why, as soon as I’m feeling up to it, I’m going to give Lew Wasserman a call. He’s the cheese now, isn’t he?”
“A very powerful talent agent.”
“I’m in the mood to work again. He’d be the man to call.”
“Absolutely.”
“My third husband, what a dreadful man, really scotched everything for me. Threatened L. B. Mayer. Can you imagine that?”
Loretta shook her head. No one had ever sued Louis B. Mayer and won.
“But that wasn’t the worst of it. He’s still an oozing sore. Took my boy. I only had the one child, you know. Imagine, after trying so hard for so many years, I lose him because of that thug. The court gave him to a foster family. Did you read about it?”
Loretta shook her head—but in fact, she knew all about it. “Mate-zee, we can’t do everything right.”
“We don’t. I haven’t. But what would I do—given all that time, and all those choices once again, what would I do with it?”
“Everything, right?”
“I would have held on to my work. It came easily to me, and I figured it would last—that I would last. You know? It was a gift, that talent. We don’t treasure the skills and the breaks and the good things that come naturally. At least, I didn’t.”
“Look at all the great things you did. You helped build this hospital. Your name is on the plaque with the original trustees.”
“Fire insurance, baby. Fire insurance.”
“What do you mean?”
“You Catholics invented it. It’s called an indulgence. You do all the good you can to make up for the sin.”
“But all sins are forgiven when the sinner is contrite.”
“Sure. But that doesn’t mean the sinner feels the redemption. Sometimes the sin overpowers the forgiveness. That’s why we build hospitals. We don’t feel clean.”
Loretta wanted to go back in time with Mae. She didn’t like this conversation; it reminded her that sometimes the story of a life doesn’t end as it might in the movies, in one happy frame, sealed with one glorious kiss. Sometimes it ends like this, in a room with one gown and a spare. At least the window was big, and beyond it a view of a green field and a blue California sky.
Loretta wanted to cheer Mae up, so she asked, “Do you remember The Primrose Ring?”
“No.”
“Nineteen seventeen.”
“Oh, honey, that was almost century ago.” Mae laughed.
“You played a nurse. I was four years old and played a fairy. My first job in show business.”
“You remember that?”
“Every moment. In my four-year-old way. I flew from the grid in a harness. It was cinched so tight, it left a mark. But Mama rubbed coconut oil on my stomach for six months afterwards until it faded. But I didn’t care. When I was on the sound stage, I was flying.”
“You never feel pain when the camera is rolling. Why is that?”
“Never figured it out.” Loretta patted Mae’s hand. “Bobby Leonard was a good director. Taught me how to play checkers.”
“A fine man and a good husband.”
“You started Tiffany Pictures with him.”
“And I should’ve stayed there. And I should’ve stayed with him. But he really wanted a child. Well, I went on to have one—with the wrong man. And I heard he had children. Why do we let the good ones go?”
“I don’t know, Mae. That’s one of those questions I plan on asking God when I see Him.” Loretta’s eyes filled with tears. She remembered Spence and Clark—both gone, and neither knew the depth of her feelings. She might have shown her feelings on the screen, but in life she kept them hidden. Safer that way, or so she thought at the time.
“Oh, let’s not go down that road. It’s got a terrible view,” Mae joked.
Loretta took Mae’s hand. It was as soft as it had been decades ago. Actresses never go in the sun, if they’re wise. They preserve the skin, and when they preserve the skin, they lengthen the career.
They sat in silence for a few moments. Mae looked out on the fields behind the actors’ home. There was a lemon grove. The manicured trees were full of ripe fruit, the bright yellow bursting through the green like canary diamonds on a velvet evening glove.
“Bobby used to say, Don’t act, Mae. Just be. And that’s all I tried to do all my life, just be. But staying in the moment, it has its price. You’re sewing the days and years together, and when there’s no plan, you drop stitches here and there.”
“Not many. You changed my life, Mae.”
“Oh, honey, I wish I would’ve steered you to a different racket. Pictures are for suckers, and movies, what are they really? It’s art you can put your hand through. It’s just light and air and silver. It’ll dissolve in those canisters and turn to dust. Just like us. Well, me a helluva sooner than you.”
“Along the way, you make people laugh and cry and think.”
“They’d do that anyway, honey.” Mae closed her eyes. “Can you come and see me again sometime?”
“I will.”
“It took you a long time to get here.”
“It did. Too long.”
“Well, we fixed that up, didn’t we?”
“You rest, Mate-zee. And I’ll see you soon.”
Mae closed her eyes and went off to sleep as though the ability were on tap. Loretta walked down the hallway. She would remind herself to visit Mae, and to buy her a proper robe and slippers, something in velour, something in a shade of lilac.
A bright red bird landed on the windowsill. Loretta sipped her coffee and watched the bird through the glass. The bird looked her straight in the eye, which sent a chill through her.
Loretta went outside and picked up the newspaper on the driveway. The paperboy had missed the entrance, and the roll had landed on the lawn. She tiptoed through the wet grass and picked it up. She unrolled it and began reading as she walked back to the house. It was March 24. The night before, Mae Murray had died in her sleep.
Loretta sighed as she read the litany of bankruptcies, lawsuits, and failed projects that had dogged Mae, and for a moment wished for the days of the powerful studios, when an obituary was a love letter and not a police blotter. Eddie Mannix, or any of the boys in the front office who controlled the flow of information, would never have allowed this—i
t reflected poorly on everyone.
Loretta stopped and took a deep breath. She sat down on the front step of the porch and wept. She decided to put a swing on the branch of the oak tree in her front yard. Her granddaughter Maria would enjoy it, and it would be a fitting tribute to Mae Murray, who taught her that to play was to live.
17
Loretta waited in the baggage area of LAX for Judy. Occasionally someone would see Loretta Young out running an errand and figure she was somebody, but at this stage of her life, so long away from pictures and television, they couldn’t figure out who she might be. She carried herself like a star; maybe age had brought a different kind of sophistication and beauty, but the elegance that had made her special was still there.
When Loretta saw her daughter come down the escalator, she was thrilled to see her.
“Mom, this car is crazy.”
“It’s a brand-new nineteen sixty-six Rolls-Royce.”
“And you’re still a bad driver.”
“No, the man who sold it to me assured me that if I bought it I would instantly be a better driver.”
“Money talks. Or should I say, money lies.”
“No kidding.”
“Should we go out tonight?” Judy asked.
“I called your brothers—they’ve got plans, but if you stay through the weekend, they’ll come over for supper on Sunday. We’ll get all the aunts together, Mama. The whole shebang.”
“Where’s my stepfather?”
“He’s around.” Loretta and Tom were living apart. Once she decided to retire from acting, and the boys were grown, there was little to hold them together.
“I don’t want to see him, if that’s all right with you. I’m old enough now to choose how I want to spend time.”
“That’s fine.”
“I wish you would have put him in his place when I was a girl.”
“That’s in the past.”
“I still think about it. He resented me. I’m a mother, and I can’t understand how he could look at me at five years old and consider me a rival.”