I began with her first hit, the aforementioned Soiled. In it Lily portrays Lorna Appleby, a sweet-natured farm lass whose preeminence in the church choir inspires her to seek work as a band singer in Chicago. The city has its vile way with her and by the film’s end she’s a hard-bitten dope fend who expires for her sins on the steps of a church, smiling in tender nostalgia at the hymn wafting from inside. Produced on the cheap, it raked in a tidy bundle, prompting the studio to star her in a more lavishly produced version of the same basic story. The second picture, Brazen, made twice as much as Soiled, and it seemed, to her sister’s boundless chagrin, that a Star had been born.
These first films, while hardly classics of the genre, remain solid popcorn fare. Lily was one juicy morsel, and if her acting suffered from a certain excess of conviction, it was hardly out of keeping with the films’ overheated storylines.
Her next picture, Shame Is for Rich Girls, was less successful both artistically and at the box office. Lily plays Glenda, an impoverished coed who, forced to do her sorority sisters’ washing, boils with secret rage. Determined to wed the rich but engaged Oliver Bredwell (Farley Granger), she befriends his fancée, Hope, poisons her, and by bonding with the grief-stricken Oliver over “their” loss, wins his hand. Her fortune made, she heartlessly neglects her husband and child while romancing a still richer candidate for hubby number two. Through a plot twist so contrived I rewound twice to make sure I’d seen it, evidence arrives that proves her guilty of Hope’s murder. She’s arrested during her swanky engagement party and dragged off to death row, where she undulates her way to the chair, unrepentantly snarling the film’s title line to the sad-eyed chaplain.
Lily began filming Shame just after the release of Diana’s first smash and it is perhaps the resulting competitiveness that accounts for the sheer manic awfulness of her performance. Watching it, you picture dental hygienists poised just off camera, rushing in between takes to extract the scenery from her teeth.
Diana’s triumph as a nun caused Lily to broaden her range beyond bad-girl roles. It did little, though, to curb the insane gusto of her acting, which worsened with each picture. I will provide no summaries of her many subsequent flops, as their contents are admirably conveyed by their titles, among them I Sold My Baby!, The Monster from Creature Lake, and Third Floor, Lingerie! One sensed that Lily’s response to increasingly feeble scripts had been to say, “Hmm, not very good, this—I shall have to act all that much harder!”
By three a.m. I was watching episodes of her daffy high school teacher sitcom, Sorry, Miss Murgatroyd! — a title that frankly could have done without the comma. I finished up at four, blearily surfing through her more recent work, mostly teen slasher films in which she portrays various old bats who pay a mortal price for their sins (their chief sin, of course, being oldness). After the evening I’d put in, the sight of her head tumbling neatly into a knitting basket was one I found indescribably soothing.
Nine
I OVERSLEPT THE NEXT MORNING AND, after downing enough coffee to simulate the early stages of Parkinson’s, drove to the address Lou had given me. It was a large Spanish-style house on a somewhat parched hilltop in Los Feliz. I passed through a wooden gate in a moldering stucco wall and found myself in what must once have been a gracious courtyard but which now looked pretty sad and seedy. There were weeds sprouting from the central fountain and the vegetation ran toward frayed palms and tatty birds-of-paradise. I approached the front door and rang the bell, which was answered by a middle-aged ample-bosomed black lady dressed in a gray-and-white maid’s uniform. Seeing me, she crossed her arms and regarded me with frank distaste, as though I were a purveyor of tainted meats unwisely attempting a second sale.
“Hello,” I smiled, attempting a Gilbertian charm offensive, “my name’s Glen DeWitt and—”
“Mr. Malenfant’s busy. With another student, ” she added, her snide emphasis on the word suggesting a clear if somewhat baffling disdain for higher learning. I explained that I was neither a student nor there to see Mr. Malenfant. My appointment was with Lily and had been arranged through Mr. Perlmutter. It was clear from the look that greeted Lou’s name that she couldn’t have liked him less had he been a Rhodes scholar, but she let me in.
Seen from inside, the place resembled a scaled-down Chateau Marmont three weeks into a housekeeping strike. I’d heard of maids refusing to do windows, but this one appeared to draw the line at floors. I followed her through the terra-cotta-tiled foyer into a large, dark living room with a lovely coffered ceiling. The furniture, in sad contrast, looked to have been purchased in 1970 by a designer inexplicably enamored of the color orange. We took a left into a much sunnier dining room, the table barely visible under piles of books, old magazines, and photo albums. Sliding doors led out to a covered terrace with rows of ornate stone planters and a lot of badly cracked white wicker furniture. The garish pink-and-green cushions distracted one’s eye from the flowers, a good thing since the place was basically a geranium hospice.
Beyond the patio was a pool. To the left of this was a pool house, and to the right a lawn and garden maintained, it appeared, by the Miss Haversham Landscaping Service. A petite figure in clam diggers and a man’s shirt several sizes too large was harvesting the few presentable roses in a straw basket. I presumed this was Lily, though I couldn’t be certain as her face was concealed by a huge sunbonnet with an attached veil that tied under the chin.
“Miss Malenfant!” yodeled the maid. The little figure turned and waved gaily in greeting. She undid the veil and lifted it over the brim, revealing the face of the thwarted seat bandit from the plane. She flashed a radiant smile, then proceeded jubilantly toward me, her arms flung wide like an Oscar winner parading in triumph toward the stage. “Dear God,” I thought, “please don’t let her recognize me as the young cad who’d refused to surrender his seat to her.”
“Mr. DeWitt!” she throbbed, taking my outstretched hand in both of hers. “How terribly kind of you to drive out to my far-flung abode!”
“Wow, it’s really you!” I said, my gaze wide-eyed and worshipful. “This is such an honor!”
“Please! ’Tis I who am honored to have such a fine-looking young man take an interest in my little films. Louise,” she said to the housekeeper, handing her the basket without a glance, “do be an angel and put these in water.” Louise snickered openly at Lily’s lady-of-the-manor routine and Lily shot her a peevish look.
“ Now, please, Louise. And perhaps a pitcher of my special lemonade for my guest.”
Louise curtsied satirically, then withdrew as Lily removed her bonnet.
“Forgive the hat, Mr. DeWitt,” she said, tossing it over an expired geranium. “My skin, you know. So delicate. I won’t let mean Mr. Sun do to me what he’s done to my sister.”
“Oh?”
“She hides the ravages as best she can, but the makeup it takes! So heavy! Like Spackle.”
We sat at a rickety table on equally precarious chairs. She crossed her legs as though posing for a cheesecake shot, then peered at me curiously.
“You seem familiar. Have we met?”
“Oh, I think I’d remember that! You probably recognize my face from your plays. I’ve seen them all and I always ask for the first row.”
“How dear of you! So you saw my Nunsense? ”
“Three times!”
“And Hallelujah Hollywood!? ”
“Pure magic!”
“And Hats Off to Shakespeare!? ”
“Transcendent!”
“How lucky I am to have such a supporter! If there were more like you we’d have played out the full week.”
Louise reappeared, bearing a tray with glasses and a pitcher of lemonade. “Allow me!” I said chivalrously and poured.
“I must say, Mr. DeWitt, I already like you much better than that other writer my publisher sent to help me. Cheers!”
“Cheers!”
“Not that I’ll need much assistance—I’ve written all my life, you know. S
tories. Poems. Little plays. I’m a hard worker and fiercely disciplined!”
“Is there gin in this?”
“Just for flavor. This other writer, he seemed to barely know my movies at all. All he wanted to talk about was my sister and nephew. As if the book were about them, not me!”
“When your eyes flash like that, you look just like you did in Switchblade Sadie right before you threw the acid in William Bendix’s face.”
“What a memory you have!” She laughed delightedly and downed half her drink in one ladylike gulp. “Of course, that’s not to say I plan to keep them out of the book entirely. Far from it. They’re both incorrigible liars and it’s up to me to set the record straight. But that’s hardly the whole point of the book. I’m the one people want to hear about. The public’s sick to death of Diana.”
“God knows I am! I have to say, Miss Malenfant—”
“Please — Lily!”
“I have never understood,” I said with the gravest umbrage, “why your sister gets so damned much attention when you are such a better actress!”
When I was thirteen I was marooned for the summer with my mother in a New Hampshire cottage owned by my great-aunt. Having recently discovered Theater, Sophistication, and Boys, I found the town provincial and the lack of Art and Culture stifling. Ordered to enjoy the outdoors, I trudged every day to the local library, which offered air-conditioning, privacy, and a small performing arts section. Three weeks into my sentence I made my way to the arts alcove and there, rocking on his haunches, was a slim, pretty lad about my age. I saw that he was engrossed in A History of the Tony Awards while he noted that I was holding The Making of No, No, Nanette. I’ll never forget the expressions that greeted this mutual discovery. “Can it be?” our faces asked, tremulous with hope. “Is there another of my tribe in this philistine backwater? Have I at last found a true soul mate, one who shares my most secret desires and convictions?” This pretty much sums up the look Lily gave me when I pronounced her a better actress than Diana.
“You are very kind, Mr. DeWitt,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
“You mean ‘very perceptive.’ ”
“Perhaps I do!” She giggled and coquettishly freshened my lemonade.
I sensed at this point that the job was pretty well mine, but just to be safe I began gushing about her films, starting with a panegyric to her famed flop Shame Is for Rich Girls. Actresses, even minor ones, are used to receiving compliments on their hits; praise their stinkers and you establish yourself immediately as a discerning connoisseur.
“I had such hopes for that picture!” she sighed. “Its failure was due entirely to my sister.”
“No!”
“She had her own film coming out at the same time. She’d gained a lot of influence with the studio head through means too disgusting to go into (except in the book, of course) and she convinced him to give tons of promotion to her picture and none at all to mine. And, of course, the little whore got her way.”
“It’s time the world knew that.”
I kept the unction flowing, citing “favorite” scenes from other films and pausing occasionally to just gape at her and say, “I can’t believe I’m actually sitting here talking to you!” (“Calm yourself, Glen!” she’d titter. “I’m not a goddess!”) Though her appetite for praise was limitless, my hastily acquired knowledge of her work was not, so I changed the subject, asking what was on the horizon for her.
“Oh, big things,” she said, her tone suddenly hushed and cryptic. “Very big things.”
“Really?”
“My biggest picture yet. I can’t say any more just now—you talk about these ideas too much and the next thing you know someone’s stealing them.”
“So,” I asked, “is this like a big comeback vehicle?”
She bristled slightly. “I wouldn’t say ‘comeback.’ It’s not as if I ever left—not that you’d know that, to hear Diana talk. She likes to make out that my career’s in some sort of decline, which is nonsense. She’s jealous because I’m still working while she hasn’t made a picture in three years. Being ‘choosy,’ she calls it. Rubbish! There’s simply no demand. I made three movies this year. One’s doing quite well in Portugal and another comes out in February. Major release.”
“Really?” I said.
“It’s a wonderful thriller called Guess What, I’m Not Dead. It’s about this horrible young man—or woman, we’re never quite sure— who goes about killing people in very interesting ways. You know, gruesome but clever. I play the mysterious landlady of a boardinghouse where the hero’s sister, that Barrymore girl, is hiding because—”
Her synopsis was interrupted by the abrupt slam of a screen door. The sound had come from the pool house. Peering over, I saw that a slim, dapper gentleman in his sixties had emerged from its shuttered darkness out onto the deck. He wore tan linen trousers, a white V-neck sweater, a trim gray mustache, and a mysterious little smile. The smile was soon rendered less mysterious by the emergence from the pool house of a well-built young man of perhaps twenty-five clad only in minuscule hiking shorts, boots, and a white tank top.
“Ah,” said Lily brightly, “I see Monty has finished with his new student.”
Monty ambled up the short steps to the patio, his campily inquisitive gaze clearly posing the question “Whose little boy are you? ” His “student” (for I already had grave doubts about that) prowled languidly behind as though on his own private catwalk.
“Monty, dear,” said Lily, rising a bit unsteadily, “I’d like you to meet Glen DeWitt. He’s going to help me with my book.”
I was in! Exulting inwardly, I extended a cheerful hand to Monty.
“Well,” he said, shaking it heartily, “aren’t you a brave boy? You’re actually prepared to sit for months on end transcribing my sister’s lurid reminiscences? My advice to you is cocktails and plenty of them. Fortunately, as you can see, we provide them at all hours.”
“He’s a very impressive young man. He remembers films of mine
I’d quite forgotten.”
“There’s no skill in that, darling. I’ve seen films of yours I couldn’t forget if I tried and, believe me, I have.”
“Monty’s a horrible tease. Pay no attention to him.”
Monty smiled. “Oh, I do hope he’ll pay some attention.” Though frank come-ons from gentlemen over sixty usually send an anxious shiver up the Cavanaugh vertebrae, Monty’s manner was so friendly, so cheerfully straightforward that my first impulse was to flirt back, as though decorum demanded it. It was my first glimpse of his singular knack for making lechery seem charming.
“Ah, there you are!” he said to the fantasy hiker who’d finally joined our little circle. Seeing him up close I couldn’t help noting his drowsy eyes—was he stoned?—the inch of bare midriff between his shirt and shorts, and the two beepers adorning his belt.
“Allow me,” said Monty with wry formality, “to present the latest enrollee in the Monty Malenfant Academy of Dramatic Arts —Glen DeWitt, Mr. Cody Masters.”
“Hey,” said Cody, flashing his palm in lieu of an actual handshake, for which, I sensed, I’d have been charged.
“My brother’s one of Hollywood’s most sought-after acting coaches,” explained Lily.
“I see.”
“He takes very few students,” she added proudly, “and only one at a time. Though I recall once there were two.”
“Ah.”
“He was an actor himself, you know. As a child. He was a big star before any of us were.”
“No shit?” inquired his dilated pupil.
“Guilty as charged. Have you by chance,” he asked me, “seen any of my pictures?”
“I’m not sure,” I said diplomatically. “Possibly.”
“Oh, you’d remember if you had. My pictures, like Lily’s, haunt the memory long after the initial trauma has passed. Counseling is often required.”
“Did you have a good class, Mr. Masters?” asked Lily.
“
Yeah, great,” smirked Cody, gamely throwing himself into the charade. “We did something by, uh, Shakespeare and also, um...” His knowledge of playwrights depleted, he let out a stoned giggle and his beeper went off.
“Can I use your phone on my way out?”
“Of course. And splendid work today. Your Malvolio was wonderfully nuanced, but next time you might imbue your Trigorin with a touch more world-weary insouciance.”
Cody emitted a baffled snigger and shook his head.
“Man, you are too much.”
“I am tempted to return the compliment. Good day, Cody.”
He prowled out through the dining room, passing the baleful Louise, who pointedly positioned herself between him and a table covered in easily pocketable tchotchkes. At least I now understood the fish eye I’d gotten when she’d taken me for a fresh applicant to Monty’s academy. I caught Monty’s eye and cocked an eyebrow as though to inquire just how recently he felt the turnip truck and I had parted company. His response was a droll parody of innocence, the eyes cast casually skyward, the lips whistling a little tune, and I found myself giggling as helplessly as Cody had.
“I share your mirth, Mr. DeWitt,” said Lily. “Really, Monty! I know you sometimes accept a student just because he’s good-looking but I don’t think you’ll ever make an actor of that one.”
“You see no potential?”
“His diction! Quite hopeless.”
“I have an exercise to correct that. It’s loosely inspired by Demosthenes. Very loosely.”
“My brother’s problem,” said Lily, “is that he’s too nice to tell people when they have no talent. He means well but if I were him I’d be ashamed to take their money.”
“On that score, I assure you, I feel no guilt whatsoever. Can you join us for lunch, Mr. DeWitt?”
I feared that further conversation might expose my limited acquaintance with Lily’s oeuvre, besides which I was bursting to report my victory to Stephen. I told them that while nothing would give me greater pleasure, I had a pressing appointment for which I had to leave shortly.