In his movie, Thelma Ritter wearing those cardigan sweaters half unbuttoned with the sleeves pushed back to the elbow, that was me. Thelma was playing me, only bigger. Hammy. My same way of parting my hair down the middle. Those eyes that follow every move at the same time. Not many folks knew, but the folks I knew, they knew. My given name is Hazie. The character’s called Birdie. Mankiewicz, that rat bastard, he wasn’t fooling anyone in our crowd.
It’s like seeing Franklin Pangborn play his fairy hairdresser. Al Jolson in blackface. Or Everett Sloane doing his hook-nosed-Jew routine. Except this two-ton joke lands on only you, you don’t share the load with nobody else, and folks expect you to laugh along or you’re being a poor sport.
If you need more convincing, tell me the name of the broad who sat for Leonardo da Vinci’s painting the Mona Lisa. People remember poor Marion Davies, and they picture Dorothy Comingore, drinking and hunched over those enormous Gregg Toland jigsaw puzzles on an RKO soundstage.
You talk about art imitating life, well, the reverse is true.
On the scripted page, John Glenn creeps down the outside of the space capsule hull, embracing Lilly Hellman and pulling her to safety. Inside the window of the orbiting capsule, we see them kissing passionately. We hear the buzz of a hundred zippers ripping open and see a flash of pink skin as they tear the clothes from each other. In zero gravity, Lilly’s bare breasts stand up, firm and perfect. Her purple nipples erect, hard as flint arrowheads.
In the kitchen, the Webster specimen places the percolator on the morning tray. Two cups and saucers. The sugar bowl and creamer.
When I met her, Kathie Kenton was nothing. A Hollywood hopeful. A hostess in a steakhouse, handing out menus and clearing dirty plates. My job is not that of a stylist or press agent, but I’ve groomed her to become a symbol for millions of women. Across time, billions. I may not be an actor, but I’ve created a model of strength to which women can aspire. A living example of their own incredible possible potential.
Sitting at the table, I reach over and take a silver teaspoon from one saucer. With the spoon bowl cupped to my mouth, I exhale moist breath to fog the metal. I lower the spoon to the hem of my lacy maid’s apron and polish the silver between folds of the fabric.
In the Hellman screenplay, through the window of the space capsule we see Lilly’s bare neck and shoulders arch with pleasure, the muscles rippling and shuddering as Glenn’s lips and tongue trail down between her floating, weightless breasts. The fantasy dissolves as their panting breath fogs the window glass.
Buffing the spoon, I say, “Please don’t hurt her…” Placing the spoon back on the tray, I say, “I’ll kill you before I’ll let you hurt Miss Kathie.”
With two fingers I pluck the starched white maid’s cap from my head, the hairpins pulling stray hairs, plucking and tearing away a few long hairs. Rising to my feet, I reach up with the cap between my hands, saying, “You’re not as clever as you think, young man,” and I set the maid’s cap on the very tip-top of this Webster’s beautiful head.
ACT I, SCENE FOURTEEN
Cut to me, running, a trench coat worn over my maid’s uniform flapping open in front to reveal the black dress and white apron within. In a tracking shot, I hurry along a path in the park, somewhere between the dairy and the carousel, my open mouth gasping. In the reverse angle, we see that I’m rushing toward the rough boulders and outcroppings of the Kinderberg rocks. Matching my eye line, we see that I’m focused on a pavilion built of brick, in the shape of a stop sign, perched high atop the rocks.
Intercut this with a close-up shot of the telephone which sits on the foyer table of Miss Kathie’s town house. The telephone rings.
Cut to me running along, my hair fluttering out behind my bare head. My knees tossing the apron of my uniform into the air.
Cut to the telephone, ringing and ringing.
Cut to me veering around joggers. I’m dodging mothers pushing baby carriages and people walking dogs. I jump dog leashes like so many hurdles. In front of me, the brick pavilion atop Kinderberg looms larger, and we can hear the nightmarish calliope music of the nearby carousel.
Cut to the foyer telephone as it continues to ring.
As I arrive at the brick pavilion, we see an assortment of people, almost all of them elderly men seated in pairs at small tables, each pair of men hunched over the white and black pieces of a chess game. Some tables sit within the pavilion. Some tables outside, under the overhang of its roof. This, the chess pavilion built by Bernard Baruch.
Cut back to the close-up of the foyer telephone, its ringing cut off as fingers enter the shot and lift the receiver. We follow the receiver to a face, my face. To make it easier, picture Thelma Ritter’s face answering the telephone. In this intercut flashback we watch me say, “Kenton residence.”
Still watching me, my reaction as I answer the telephone, we hear the voice of my Miss Kathie say, “Please come quick.” Over the telephone, she says, “Hurry, he’s going to kill me!”
In the park, I weave between the tables shared by chess players. On the table between most pairs sits a clock displaying two faces. As each player moves a piece, he slaps a button atop the clock, making the second hand on one clock face stop clicking and making the other second hand begin. At one table, an old-man version of Lex Barker tells another old Peter Ustinov, “Check.” He slaps the two-faced clock.
Seated at the edge of the crowd, my Miss Kathie sits alone at a table, the top inlaid with the white and black squares of a chessboard. Instead of pawns, knights and rooks, the table holds only a thick ream of white paper. Both her hands clutch the stack of paper, as thick as the script for a Cecil B. DeMille epic. The lenses of dark sunglasses hide her violet eyes. A silk Hermès scarf, tied under her chin, hides her movie-star profile. Reflected in her glasses, we see two of me approach. Twin Thelma Ritters.
Sitting opposite her at the table, I say, “Who’s trying to kill you?”
Another ancient Slim Summerville moves a pawn and says, “Checkmate.”
From the offscreen distance, we hear the filtered ambient noise of horse carriages clip-clopping along the Sixty-fifth Street Traverse. Taxicabs honk on Fifth Avenue.
Miss Kathie shoves the ream of paper, sliding it across the chessboard toward me. She says, “You can’t tell anyone. It’s so humiliating.”
Bark, oink, screech… Screen Star Stalked by Gigolo.
Moo, meow, buzz… Lonely, Aging Film Legend Seduced by Killer.
The stack of papers, she says she discovered them while unpacking one of Webb’s suitcases. He’s written a biography about their romantic time together. Miss Kathie pushes the stack at me, saying, “Just read what he says…” Then immediately pulling the pages back, hunching her shoulders over them and glancing to both sides, she whispers, “Except the parts about me permitting Mr. Westward to engage me in anal intercourse are a complete and utter fabrication.”
An aged version of Anthony Quinn slaps a clock, stopping one timer and starting another.
Miss Kathie slides the pages within my reach, then pulls them back, whispering, “And just so you know, the scene where I perform oral sex on Mr. Westward’s person in the toilet of Sardi’s is also a total bold-faced lie…”
She looks around again, whispering, “Read it for yourself,” pushing the stack of pages across the chessboard in my direction. Then, yanking the pages back, she says, “But don’t you believe the part where he writes about me under the table at Twenty-one doing that unspeakable act with the umbrella…”
Terrence Terry predicted this: a handsome young man who would enter Miss Kathie’s life and linger long enough to rewrite her legend for his own gain. No matter how innocent their relationship, he’d merely wait until her death so he could publish his lurid, sordid tale. No doubt a publisher had already given him a contract, paid him a sizable advance of monies against the royalties of that future tell-all best seller. Most of this dreadful book was in all probability already typeset. Its cover already designed and printed. Once Miss Kathie was dead, someday, the tawdry lies of this charming parasite would replace anything valuable she’d accomplished with her life. The same way Christina Crawford has forever sullied the legend of Joan Crawford. The way B. D. Merrill has wrecked the reputation of her mother, Bette Davis, and Gary Crosby has dirtied the life story of his father, Bing Crosby-Miss Kathie would be ruined in the eyes of a billion fans.