Page 6 of The Gathering Storm

‘I didn’t drop her, I just – took a step back. My God, if she had her stomach pumped, she must have been bad! She could have died! You can’t believe I wouldn’t want to know.’ Her eyes slid away from his. ‘What did Beanie tell you?’

Beanie, his driver, always knew all the Hollywood gossip. There was a network of drivers who exchanged information while they waited outside studios and restaurants and clubs. And everyone who was anyone in Hollywood had a driver.

‘Best you talk to Miss Rose about it,’ Wilma said. ‘Maybe some of it’s not true. Alcohol and drugs and all sorts o’ wildness. Other men—’

‘What? She’s only been married a few months!’

‘That Mr Cornwell, he’s no angel. He’s led her wrong, you can bet on that. I’ll get your breffus now.’

‘No, skip it, there’s no time. I must get over to the clinic right away. Tell Beanie to have the car ready in ten minutes.’ Other men? Lennie thought, with a sense of doom. It was supposed to have been a love-match. And while the studios liked their stars to have romances, and loved them to get married, they didn’t sanction promiscuity. He hastened indoors to finish dressing.

Between 1929, when Talkies became widespread, and 1934, there was a period of freedom in the making of movies. On-screen violence, profanity, crime, drug use, prostitution, promiscuity … nothing was off limits. It was as if, ordinary decent folk complained, bad behaviour was being actively promoted, and they feared it would corrupt society.

In the first half of 1934 a campaign gathered way to persuade the government to take over the censorship of films. The possibility of government interference was enough to frighten the studios into adopting self-censorship as the lesser evil. Under the leadership of Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, a Production Code was drawn up. Every motion picture released on or after the 1st of July 1934 had to acquire a certificate of approval from the MPPDA.

The Hays Code, as it was generally known, covered everything. Profanity – the use of words like God, Jesus, hell, damn, bastard and so on – was forbidden. There was to be no nudity, even in silhouette; men and women were not to be shown in bed together; no excessive or lustful kissing, especially if one of the characters was a bad person. Crime was not to be treated sympathetically in case it encouraged the impressionable. There was to be no mockery of the clergy or law-enforcement officers or the institution of marriage. Scenes depicting childbirth, surgical operations, or the judicial death sentence were outlawed. And the Flag was to be treated at all times with respect and dignity.

It was natural that, with the content of films so strictly overseen, the studios should clamp down on their stars. In the early days actors, even the females, had enjoyed a freewheeling, buccaneering kind of life. But now even a big star like MGM’s Mr Clark Gable had to conduct himself carefully in public: he was separated from his wife, Ria Langham, but she was unwilling to grant him a divorce, so if he romanced any lady it had to be strictly outside the bedroom. Divorce was acceptable in Hollywood, but adultery was anathema.

Lennie pondered these things as he was driven over to the nursing home in Wilshire. Beanie glanced at him in the mirror, and finally spoke up when they were halted by traffic.

‘Doan worry, Mist’ Manning. Dat Ardmore place is the best. Dat whaur William Powell went, time he got his kinney stones fixed. Miss Rose’ll be okay.’

Lennie gave him a stern look. ‘Oh, you’re talking to me now, are you? You didn’t say a word before, when I might have helped her.’

Beanie looked wounded. ‘I’d have tole you all right, but Wilma, she said notta. She said you wasn’t to be upset.’

‘And do you always do what Wilma tells you?’ Lennie said scornfully.

Beanie thought about it. ‘Pretty much,’ he concluded. ‘She like to whale on me if I cross her any. Wilma, she got a temper on her. She flang a pan o’ potatoes at a journalist feller one time, boiling water an’ all, jus’ cos he trad mud on her clean floor.’ He chuckled appreciatively. ‘She’s some woman, that Wilma.’

At the Ardmore, Lennie found Estelle in the sister’s room, sitting at a desk, telephone glued to her ear. Estelle Cable was tiny, but made up for it with enormous masses of hair, dyed a deep, henna red, and flamboyant clothes. She never went unnoticed. The air was blue with smoke. She smoked incessantly from a long-stemmed holder, crushing each cigarette out halfway down, claiming in her harsh bray that she was trying to give up, but lighting another immediately. No-one knew how old she was: her face, under thick make-up, was hatched with fine lines, so that her detractors sometimes referred to her as the Shrunken Head. She was fierce, fearless, inexhaustible, and hugely successful at her job.

She raised her baleful eagle’s glare to Lennie as he came in, waved the cigarette at him to wait, barked a few more furious things into the telephone, then slammed it down.

‘This is a bad business,’ she said. Her voice was as smoky as a railway tunnel and her accent was pure Noo Yoik. She crushed out the current cigarette and, as though without volition, began fumbling in her handbag for another. ‘There’s only so much money can do. I can’t bribe a whole hospital.’ She waved a free hand at the door. ‘Oh, this place is sound. Discretion is their sell. But someone at the Park will blab. Worse luck, Phil Stuckey from the Herald was outside the Parrot and saw it all. They love all that schmeer down at the Herald, Hollywood gossip, especially the bad kind. Most of all when some little Miss Susie Perfect falls flat on her face.’ She gave him a skin-stripping look. ‘What’ve you heard?’

‘Rosecrantz came to see me this morning. That’s the first I knew she was in any trouble.’

‘Came to see you?’

‘He’s dropping her as a client,’ Lennie admitted reluctantly. ‘He thought I’d want to know.’

‘Crap,’ Estelle said explosively. She had finally fidgeted a new cigarette out of a pack and fitted it into the holder. Lennie fished his lighter from his pocket and leaned across. ‘Thanks.’ She blew the first cloud politely away from his face, evidently deep in thought. ‘That may not be all bad. I like Rosecrantz, he’s a great guy, but he’s one of the old school. Maybe she needs a different kind of agent now, someone with more pizzazz. I gotta work fast, though, make it that she dumped him.’

‘But there’s the drink and the drugs at the club,’ Lennie began.

‘Yeah, we gotta work out a story. How’s this? She was taking tablets for hay fever, had one cocktail, had a bad reaction.’

‘But Rose doesn’t—’

‘I gotta tame doctor’ll say he was treating her, warned her not to drink, but she’s young, impetuous, she’s out for an innocent lark with her young pals, who can blame her for forgetting in the heat of the moment?’

‘One cocktail?’

She shrugged. ‘Bobino, manager of the Parrot, he’s one of mine. And he’ll keep a hold on his staff. It’s the rest of her posse that’s the problem. She’s pals with some kids that suffer from loose mouths. She’s been running with a wild bunch lately. And some of ’em will do anything to get their names in the papers.’ She took another mouthful of smoke and absently blew straight at Lennie. ‘If we can keep her out of sight for a month or so, it’ll give time for things to calm down. We’ll say she’s suffering with nervous exhaustion from working too hard. What you gotta do is talk to Al Feinstein. And talk to her. She’s gotta shape up.’

‘It’s a bad business,’ Lennie said gloomily.