On some shelves balance scissors big enough for the Jolly Green Giant, brass buffed until it could pass as something precious, the pointed blades as long as Miss Kathie’s legs. She brandished one pair to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremonies for the six-lane Ochoakee Inland Expressway. Another pair of scissors cut the ribbon to open the Spring Water Regional Shopping Mall. Another pair, as large as a golden child performing jumping jacks, these cut the ribbon at a supermarket. At the Lewis J. Redslope Memorial Bridge. At the Tennessee assembly plant for Skyline Microcellular, Inc.
On the television in the kitchen, Miss Kathie lies on a blanket next to Cornel Wilde. As Wilde rolls on top of her, the camera pans to a nearby spitting, crackling campfire.
Filling the shelves are skeleton keys so heavy they require both hands to lift. Tin treated to shine bright as platinum. Presented by the Omaha Business Fathers and the Topeka Chamber of Commerce. The key to Spokane, Washington, presented to Miss Kathie by his honor, the right esteemed Mayor Nelson Redding. The engraved keys to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Jacksonville, Florida. The keys to Iowa City and Sioux Falls.
On the dining room television, my Miss Kathie shares a train compartment with Nigel Bruce. As he throws himself on top of her the train slips into a tunnel.
In the drawing room, Burt Lancaster lowers himself onto Miss Kathie as ocean waves roll onto a sandy beach. On the television in the den, Richard Todd throws himself onto Miss Kathie as July Fourth fireworks explode in a night sky.
Throughout this montage, the actual Miss Kathie is absent. Here and there, the camera might linger on a discarded newspaper page, a half-tone photograph of Miss Kathie exiting a limousine assisted by Webster Carlton Westward III. Her name in boldface type linked to his in the gossip columns of Sheilah Graham or Elsa Maxwell. Another photograph, the two of them dancing at a nightclub. Otherwise, the town house is empty.
My hand lifts still another trophy, a heroic statuette, the muscle of each arm and leg as small and naked as a child Miss Kathie never had, and I massage its face, without pressing, to make such thin gold, that faint shine, last as long as possible.
ACT I, SCENE NINE
“The most cunning compliments,” playwright William Inge once wrote, “seem to flatter the person who bestows them even more than they do the person who receives them.”
Once more we dissolve into flashback. Begin with a swish pan, fast enough to blur everything, then gradually slow to a long crane shot, swooping above round tables, each dinner table circled with seated guests. The gleam of every eye turns toward a distant stage; the sparkle of diamond necklaces and beaming, boiled-white tuxedo shirts reflect that far-off spotlight. We move through this vast field of white tablecloths and silverware as the shot advances toward the stage. Every shoulder turns, twisted to watch a man standing at a podium. As the shot comes into deep focus, we see the speaker, Senator Phelps Russell Warner, standing behind the microphone.
A screen fills the upstage wall, flashing with gray images of a motion picture. For a few words, the figure of Katherine Kenton appears on-screen, wearing a corseted silk ball gown as Mrs. Ludwig van Beethoven. As her husband, Spencer Tracy, snores in the background, she hunches over a roll of parchment, quill pen squeezed between her blue fingers, finishing the score to his Moonlight Sonata. Her enormous face glowing, blindingly bright, from the silver-nitrate film stock. Her eyes flashing. Her teeth blazing white.
In the audience, every face is cast in chiaroscuro, half lost in the darkness, half lost in the glare of that distant light. Forgetting themselves outside of this moment, the audience sits aware only of the man onstage and his voice. Over all, we hear the rolling thunder of the senator’s voice boosted through microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers; this booming voice says, “She serves as our brilliant light, forever guiding forward the rest of us mortals…”
Across the surface of the screen, we see my Miss Kathie in the role of Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell, elbowing her husband, James Stewart, aside so she can listen covertly to Mickey Rooney on their party line, wasp-waisted in a high-collar dress. Her Gibson-girl hair crowned with a picture hat of drooping egret plumes.
This, the year when every other song on the radio was Doris Day singing “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe” backed by the Bunny Berigan Orchestra. In the audience, no single face draws our focus. Despite their pearls and bow ties, everyone looks plain as old character players, dress extras, happy to shoot a scene sitting down.
At the microphone, the senator continues, “Her sense of noble purpose and steadfast course of action sets the pattern for our highest aspirations…” His voice sounds deep and steady as a Harry Houdini or a Franz Anton Mesmer.
This prattle, further example of what Walter Winchell means by the term “toast-masturbating.” Or “laud mouthing,” according to Hedda Hopper. According to Louella Parsons, “implying gilt.”
Turning his head to one side, the senator looks off stage right, saying, “She visits our drab world like an angel from some future age, where fear and stupidity have been vanquished…”
The camera follows his eye line to reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing in the wings, her violet eyes fixed on the senator’s spotlighted figure. Him in his black tuxedo. Her in a white gown, one elbow bent to crush a pale hand to her heart. Cue the lighting change, bring down the key light, boost the fill light to isolate Miss Kathie in the wings. Block the scene with the senator as a groom, standing before a congregation, taking his vows prior to giving her some tin trophy painted gold in lieu of a wedding ring.
It’s no wonder such bright lights seem invariably surrounded by the dried husks of so many suicidal insects.
“As a woman, she radiates charm and compassion,” says the senator, his voice echoing about the hall. “As a person, she proves an eternal marvel.” With each word, he climbs to her status, fusing himself to her name recognition and laying claim to the enormous dowry of her fame in his upcoming bid for reelection.
Upstage, the vast luminous face of my Miss Kathie hovers on-screen in the role of Mrs. Claude Monet, painting his famous water lilies. Her perfect complexion care of Lilly Daché. Her lips, Pierre Phillipe.
“She is the mother we wish we’d had. The wife we dream of finding. The woman whom all others measure themselves against,” the senator says, shining and polishing Miss Kathie’s image before the moment of her appearance. Before he presents her to this audience of the faithful. This stranger she’s never met, coaxing her fans to a low-key frenzy of anticipation before she joins him in the spotlight.
More “projectile praise” and “force fawning” or “compliment vomit,” in the eyes of Cholly Knickerbocker.
Everything sounds so much better when it comes out of a man’s mouth.
Clasped in my hands, a screenplay rolled tight, here is the only prospect for work my Miss Kathie has been offered in months. A horror flick about an aged voodoo priestess creating an army of zombies to take over the world. At the finale, the female lead is dismembered, screaming, and eaten by wild monkeys. Lynn Fontanne and Irene Dunne have already passed on this project.
That trophy held by the senator, it will never shine as bright as it shines at this moment before it’s received, while this object is still beyond Miss Kathie’s grasp. From this distance apart, the senator and she both look so perfect, as if each offers the other some complete bliss. Senator Phelps Russell Warner, he’s the stranger who would become her sixth “was-band.” Himself a prize that seems worth the effort to dust and polish over the remainder of her lifetime.