Miss Kathie walks what Walter Winchell calls “the bridal mile” wearing what Sheilah Graham calls “very off-white” posing what Hedda Hopper calls a “veiled threat.”
“Something old, something new, something borrowed,” Louella Parsons would write in her column, “and something extremely fishy.”
Miss Kathie seems too ready to be placed under what Elsa Maxwell calls “spouse arrest.”
At the altar Lon McCallister cools his heels as best man, standing next to a brown pair of eyes. This year’s groom, the harried, haggard, battle-scarred Webster Carlton Westward III.
Crowding the bride’s side of the church, the guests include Kay Francis and Donald O’Connor, Deanna Durbin and Mildred Coles, George Bancroft and Bonita Granville and Alfred Hitchcock, Franchot Tone and Greta Garbo, all the people who failed to attend the funeral for little Loverboy.
As Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would say, “More stars than there are in heaven…”
On her trip to the altar, my Miss Kathie throws looks and kisses to Cary Grant and Theda Bara. She waves a white-gloved hand at Arthur Miller and Deborah Kerr and Danny Kaye. From behind her veil she smiles at Johnny Walker, Laurence Olivier, Randolph Scott and Freddie Bartholomew, Buddy Pepper, Billy Halop, Jackie Cooper and a tiny Sandra Dee.
Her gaze wafting to a familiar mustache, Miss Kathie sighs, “Groucho!”
It’s through a veil that my darling Miss Kathie most looks like her true self. Like someone who throws you a look from the window of a train, or from the opposite side of a busy street, blurred behind speeding traffic, a face whom you could wed in that moment and imagine yourself happy to live with forever. Her face, balanced and composed, so full of potential and possibility, she looks like the answer to everything wrong. Just to meet her violet eyes feels like a blessing.
In the basement of this same building, within the crypt that holds her former “was-band” Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., alongside the ashes of Lothario and Romeo and Loverboy, amid the dead soldiers of empty champagne bottles, down there waits the mirror which contains her every secret. That defaced mirror of Dorian Gray, it forms a death mask even as the world kills her a little more each year. That scratched web of scars etched by myself wielding the same Harry Winston diamond that the Webster specimen now slips on her finger.
But wrapped in the lace of a wedding veil my Miss Kathie always becomes a promising new future. The camera lights flare amidst the flowers, the heat wilting and scorching the roses and lilies. The smell of sweet smoke.
This wedding scene reveals Webb as a brilliant actor, taking Miss Kathie in his arms he bends her backward, helpless, as his lips push her even further off balance. His bright brown eyes sparkle. His gleaming smile simply moons and beams.
Miss Kathie hurtles her bouquet at a crowd that includes Lucille Ball, Janet Gaynor, Cora Witherspoon and Marjorie Main and Marie Dressler. A mad scramble ensues between June Allyson, Joan Fontaine and Margaret O’Brien. Out of the fray Ann Rutherford emerges clutching the flowers. We all throw rice supplied by Ciro’s.
Zasu Pitts cuts the wedding cake. Mae Murray minds the guest book.
In a quiet moment during which Miss Kathie has exited to change out of her wedding gown, I sidle up beside the groom. As my wedding gift to Webb, I slip him a few sheets of printed paper.
Those dulled brown eyes look at the pages, reading the words Love Slave typed across the top margin, and he says, “What’s this?”
Brushing rice from the shoulders of his coat, I say, “Don’t play coy…”
Those pages already belong to him, stolen from his suitcase, I’m merely returning them to their rightful owner. Saying this, I straighten his boutonniere, smoothing his lapels.
Lifting the first page, scanning it, the Webb reads, “ ‘No one will ever know why Katherine Kenton committed suicide on what seemed like such a joyous occasion…’ ” His bright brown eyes look at me, then back to the page, and he continues to read.
ACT III, SCENE TWO
We continue with the audio bridge of Webster Carlton Westward III reading, “ ‘… Katherine Kenton committed suicide on what seemed like such a joyous occasion.’ ”
The mise-en-scène shows my Miss Kathie in her dressing room, backstage, the soft-focus stand-in perfect and lovely as if filmed through a veil. We watch as she sits at her dressing table, leaning into her reflection in the mirror, fixing the final smears of blood and scars and crusted scabs for her upcoming Guadalcanal battle scene. From outside the closed dressing room door we hear a voice call, “Two minutes, Miss Kenton.”
The voice-over continues reading, “ ‘It had long been rumored that Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., had taken his own life, after traces of cyanide were uncovered following his sudden death. Although no suicide note was ever found, and a subsequent inquest was unable to reach a conclusion, Drake was reported to be severely despondent, according to Katherine’s maid, Hazie Coogan…’ ”
On Miss Kathie’s dressing table, among the jars of greasepaint and hairbrushes, we see a small paper bag; the sides are rolled down to reveal its contents as a colorful array of Jordan almonds. Miss Kathie’s lithe movie-star hand carries the almonds, a red one, a green one, a white one, almond by almond, to her mouth. At the same time, her violet eyes never leave her own reflection in the mirror. A glass bottle, prominently labeled CYANIDE, sits next to the candied almonds. The bottle’s stopper removed.
Webb’s voice-over continues, “ ‘It’s likely that my adored Katherine feared losing the happiness she’d struggled so long and hard to attain.’ ”
We see the idealized, slender version of Miss Kathie stand and adjust her military costume, studying her reflection in the dressing room mirror.
The voice of Webster reads, “ ‘After so many years, my beloved Katherine had regained her stardom in the lead of a Broadway hit. She’d triumphed over a decade of drug abuse and eating disorders. And most important, she’d found a sexual satisfaction beyond anything she’d ever dreamed possible.’ ”
The Katherine Kenton fantasy stand-in lifts a tube of lipstick, twists it to its full red length and reaches toward the mirror. Over the beautiful reflection of herself, she writes: Webster’s amazing, massive penis is the only joy in this world that I will miss. She writes, As the French would say… Adios. The fantasy version of Miss Kathie dashes a tear from her eye, turning quickly and exiting the dressing room.
As the shot follows her, Miss Kathie dashes through the maze of backstage props, unused sets and loitering stagehands; the voice-over reads, “ ‘According to the statements of Miss Hazie, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., had often talked in private about ending his own life. Despite the general public impression that he and Katherine were deeply, devotedly in love, Miss Hazie testified that a morose, secret depression had settled over him. Perhaps it was this same secret sorrow which now drove my exquisite Katherine to eat those tainted sweets only minutes before the hit show’s finale.’ ”
Onstage, Japanese bombs pelt the ships of Pearl Harbor. Under this pounding cascade of exploding death, the svelte Miss Kathie leaps from stage right, bounding up the tilting deck of the USS Arizona. Already, her complexion has paled, turned pallid beneath the surface of her pancake makeup.
In voice-over, we hear Webster reading, “ ‘At the greatest moment of the greatest career of the greatest actress who has ever lived, the rainbow reds and greens and whites of those fatal candies still tingeing her luscious lips…’ ”
At the highest point of the doomed battleship, the ideal Miss Kathie stands at attention and salutes her audience.
“ ‘At that moment, in what was clearly and undeniably a romantic self-murder,’ ” the voice-over continues, “ ‘my dearest Katherine, the greatest love of my life, blew a kiss to me, where I sat in the sixth row… and she succumbed.’ ”