All That Glitters Page 8

  His dream, of course, was one day to meet Babe face to face, to have her come and watch his act. He even pleaded with Angie to persuade Frankie Adonis to bring her to the club, but it was no soap—at first. Babe didn’t favor men who took her off. Then, since no one seemed able to oblige Dore with a meeting, it occurred to me that I might be instrumental in arranging one. One day, after a business lunch with Frank and an Italian producer who might “have something” for me, as we were saying goodbye in the parking lot Frank handed over to me a manila envelope with a script he’d forgotten to deliver. The envelope had Babe Austrian’s name on it and he asked if I’d drop it by the Sunset Towers—“just leave it with the doorman.”

  I hightailed it home and shouted across the alley to Dore; in two minutes we two were heading across town to keep a fated rendezvous, carting along a couple of corrugated cartons from the trash cans, which Dore was busy emblazoning with stickers reading

  FOR MISS BABE AUSTRIAN—FRAGILE—DELIVER BY HAND ONLY

  Often as I’d passed that famous Hollywood landmark, the Sunset Towers, I’d never put a foot inside, and was fascinated at the prospect of seeing it. When we pulled up in front we jumped out as if we were on a life-or-death mission, leaving the car for the doorman to deal with, only to be halted at the reception desk. I introduced myself as Mr. Adonis’s “personal assistant,” while Dore was my “personal assistant,” carrying a shipment of expensive Austrian glassware for—who else?—Miss Austrian. I said we were expected.

  When the guy sat down at the switchboard, we sprinted for the elevator, and the door closed on his angry orders to come back.

  Upstairs, the door was opened by a black woman in full alpaca uniform, cap, and apron, looking like one of Babe’s colored maids from her early movies. This, I knew, was the famous Sugar May, a kind of benign Louise Beavers who talked darky talk and held the door wide while we trooped in with our deliveries.

  Dore stood in the middle of the room gawking at the decor, and I inquired as to the whereabouts of Sugar May’s mistress.

  “Miss Babe, she at the track,” Sugar May informed me. I asked if I might be permitted to use the telephone. The instrument was pointed out to me, a small room off the hallway, mirrored all to hell, with its own baby chandelier, some framed prints along French lines—lots of lace, garters, fluffy beds, pink tits, and cunning crotches. Pretending to place a call, I afterward made believe I had “Mr. Adonis” on the line.

  “I’m sorry, sir, Miss Austrian is at Hollywood Park but is expected. Shall we wait, sir? Very good, sir, we’ll do that. Miss Austrian’s maid-of-all-work is with us.”

  Sugar May chortled at this, saying, “I is mo’ like the maid of no work round here. Yawl wants coffee while you’s waitin’?”

  Before long Dore and I were sitting in the kitchen, klatsching away with the hired help. Dore was in hog heaven and we were laughing so hard that no one heard the foyer door open.

  “Sugar May? What the hell are these damn boxes doin’ on my rug?”

  Sugar May grimaced at us. “Missus be home early. Yawl best come along.”

  She lumbered out of the kitchen, we following at her heels to face an indignant Missus.

  “These mens done bought you’s stuff,” said Sugar May cheerfully.

  “Stuff? What stuff? And what the hell are they doin’ sittin’ in the kitchen?” Babe demanded.

  “They was havin’ theys coffee while they wuz waitin’,” was Sugar’s truthful reply.

  Before Babe could say anything, I stepped forward. “Hello there,” I began, “remember me?”

  She eyed me closely. “What the hell are you doin’ up here? I thought you were in pictures. You a delivery boy?”

  I explained that I had brought a script from Frankie. “Dore, come say hello to Miss Austrian.” Dore moved slowly and dreamily toward her, mumbling that he was happy to make her acquaintance. Babe shot me a look as if to ask what kind of contraption this was. “Dore’s an impressionist,” I volunteered. “He was anxious to meet you.”

  “Dying,” Dore croaked.

  “Pleased ta meetcha, dear,” she said politely. “Now, get off my porch, will ya, I gotta lie down, my skull’s killin’ me. I lost a bundle.”

  As she started across the room I hurried after her.

  “Dore has a terrific act. He does you. Frank’s seen him. They’d be pleased if you’d come see the show.”

  “Freebies,” Dore added.

  She glared at him, then at me. “Look, sonny, Frank and I don’t agree on a lot of things. And I don’t go out in public, Frank knows that. Leave the script on the desk there. And thanks.”

  She disappeared into the recesses of her bedroom, where I glimpsed a large bed on a dais, upholstered in white satin, with a plumed baldaquin and lots of swagged gauze. When I returned to the living room Dore was still gazing around at the conglomeration of furniture and bibelots. Babe’s taste in furniture and decor was not for everyone; in fact it was for damn few, we had to agree. I settled for placing the envelope in a prominent position in the center of the French bureau plat.

  “What is this stuff?” I asked Dore, never sure of my periods. “Louis the Fifteenth or Louis the Sixteenth?”

  “Louis the Hotel, dear,” came Dore’s reply. He showed his teeth to Sugar May as we exited. “You may keep the cartons, ducks,” he told her.

  No one got a bigger kick out of Dore’s antics and imitations than Frank Adonis. Recently things were beginning to get to him; not just Hollywood, not just his unhappy marriage, not just the effort he put forth daily, masterminding the intricacies of over a dozen high-priced careers, dealing with the delicate temperaments of the likes of Claire Regrett and Belinda Carroll, as well as Babe herself. He was having other troubles. These, however, he kept well hidden behind the suave, man-about-town façade he’d been showing the world for years—hidden even from me, with whom he’d shared a lot in a relatively short time.

  Anyway, Frank kept coming around, taking Angie out to one nightspot or another. And frequently, when the door opened, he’d find not only Angie but Dore as well, all got up for his amusement as Babe, wearing something black and sheer, or Marilyn, in her white pleated Seven-Year Itch dress, or whoever he’d decided to be that night. In fact, more than once Frankie saw one or another of the many delivery boys who arrived with liquor, cigarettes, or groceries floored after being greeted by the ersatz “Babe” or “Marilyn” or “Bette,” convinced they were actually in the presence of the real thing.

  Having met Babe in person, Dore wanted more than ever to have her see his club act, and I approached Frank on the subject. Surprisingly enough, he seemed perfectly willing and said that somehow he’d manage to haul Babe over to the Trey Deuces one night to take in the act. “Leave it to me, kid.” He figured she’d get a laugh out of it—not like Miss Clutch.

  I wasn’t in town when this encounter took place, but I heard about it later. By now Dore was really packing the joint, especially on weekends, and Frank reserved a table for himself and Babe. Apparently Dore gave his all that night, and when he came on there was an extra buzz of excitement in the room, since Babe had been spotted in a corner, hiding behind her shades. She, however, sat like a bump on a log, never applauding, never cracking a smile, never a peep. After a while Dore attempted to acknowledge her presence.

  “How’ma doin’, hon?” asked the stage Babe of the real one.

  “Lousy,” came the reply from across the room. “Somebody get the hook.”

  “Dear me,” said Dore without missing a beat, “I’m glad you came, Miss A, but I wish you’d left your hostilities in the toilet.”

  “Get off my porch, sister,” Babe called back, then tried to get up, only to fall back in her seat. She was plotzed, and Frank, fearing worse was to come, got her up again and hustled her out through a side entrance.

  Dore was crushed, and I heard all about it the day I came back from location, when he thanked me for trying and mentioned how touched he was by Frank’s note of apology. Af
ter that you didn’t hear him mention Babe anymore, and somehow the fun went out of the thing. Even then, he didn’t take Babe out of his repertoire; he was too cagey for that.

  Shortly after this, Dore celebrated his birthday and we were all invited to a special performance at the Trey Deuces, which, as it turned out, was also to be his closing show. Recently he’d received some glowing notices in one of the trade newspapers and had been offered a booking at a Key West club called Coconuts, so he was packing up his trunks and hitting the road with all his “ladies” in tow.

  From time to time Jenny and I would get a postcard from him. “Wish you were here and I were there,” “This is the land of milk and honey and I’m milking them, honey”; like that. We did miss him.

  Then the old world took a couple of wacky spins, and when it stopped I found myself a man of several changes. Alas for the Trianons, Grand or Petit, the place seemed to empty itself, and in the space of a year most of the old faces were no more. Angie had a quarrel with the landlord and was first to leave; next was our aged friend behind our bed, “the bather.” Also went Fern, who decided to marry one of her many beaux, and, most unexpected, Dore likewise threw in the towel. After six months he’d come home again, saying that the road was not for him, but before he could get himself relaunched in Hollywood, he got a call from his Aunt Bob, the one with the chicken farm outside Yuma; apparently she was ill and needed him to help her run the place for a while, and, being Dore, off he went to the desert to ride herd on a flock of chickens.

  Jenny and I were the last of the old bunch to abandon North Cadman Place, but this was no time to be sad about leaving. I was experiencing a distinct pick-up of career, with a relative rise in salary per picture, so Jenny began combing the hills above the Strip for a house. She found one halfway up a charming, winding, palm-lined street—two bedrooms, with a glamorous night view of the city grid. There was neither pool nor room for one, but that was all right—we managed with a small fishpond under a ginkgo tree, two dogs, and a cat.

  Every major career has its ups and downs, it’s part of show business, and when you’re the kind of superstar that Babe was, it wasn’t easy to maintain either momentum or equilibrium. Shirley Temple’s movie span was a brief eight years, if that, whereas Babe was still going strong in the 1970s. But there were those times when she had to take up the trap drums or find some other clever gimmick to keep herself in the public eye. For a while she’d become the “Prune Juice lady”—everyone remembers those ads, a svelte Babe in a clinging gown holding up a glass of juice, with a balloon coming out of her mouth saying, “I have a happy morning because I drink Purefroot Prune Juice,” the implication being that prunes were a laxative and kept her plumbing in perfect working order.

  By the time the forties rolled around she’d done her last Metro films (Broadway Melody of 1942 and Millie from Piccadilly in 1943) and had gone back to the scene of her earlier triumphs, AyanBee, to make the first of her Technicolor pictures, Peaches and Cream, Mademoiselle de Paree, and her last for a while, USO Girl. One of those Hollywood all-star spectaculars, it was the bomb of all bombs and it effectively finished her off, at least for a time. She announced herself as “retired”; then the next thing we knew the U.S. government was announcing that Babe Austrian would undertake a tour of the European theatre of operation as a real-life USO girl.

  When she came back home, one of the last entertainers to return from the front, the war was over and she had recovered some of her former popularity. She recorded an album of her hits—“Windy City Blues” and “Get Off My Porch” were two favorites—and she began doing clubs. She opened in Miami at the Eden Roc and was one of the first world-beaters to appear in Vegas at the Frontier Hotel. But as the years went by, Babe was yet again becoming a shopworn angel, and by 1958 she was pretty much tarnished goods. Even Winchell was referring to her as a “Gonebye Girl,” while others were proclaiming that she really was box-office poison. Luckily Frank was still her agent, and negative thinking like Winchell’s only acted as a goad to Frankie.

  In the old days there used to be a joke around the business: Frankie Adonis never took things lying down but Babe Austrian always did (big laff). Both were scrappers, both could take it as well as dish it out, and neither was a quitter. What followed, therefore, in the colorful career of Babe Austrian came not as a matter of course, but as the result of hard work on Frank’s part, as well as some shrewd maneuvering. There was all this talk that Babe was slipping; talk she’d slipped; talk that she was washed up. One month, in her fan-magazine column, Parsons took Babe to task in a typical Open Letter to a star in need of chastisement. (“What Can You Be Thinking Of, Ann Dvorak?” was one of Lolly’s choicer items, a spanking in print because Ann had been turning down parts and quarreling with her studio.) This letter of Lolly’s was entitled “Quo Vadis, Babe Austrian?” and it went:

  “Dear Babe, Whatever is happening to you these days? That’s the question your many fans want to have answered. Whither goes thou, Babe? After saving our famous relic, AyanBee Studios, and making them more money than they’d seen in years, after adding to the everlasting glory of Leo the Lion in that too too funny Marx fellows picture, and now suddenly we have this parade of stinkeroos. What can you have been thinking of by doing Son of a Gun? And what can Frankie Adonis be thinking of, letting you appear in such a dud? If that’s a comedy I’m a monkey’s aunt!”

  The letter went on in this vein, exhorting Babe to find a suitable script and get her act together: millions of people were just sitting and waiting for her to make them laugh again. What Lolly had not known at the time, nor had her colleague and rival, Hedda, was that even as the Fat One was typing out her letter, Frank Adonis had been doing just that; finding a good script for Babe. Sticking his neck way out, he was about to launch his own personal production, to star Babe in what was to become the classic Camellia.

  Louella might well have wondered where Frank was going to get the money to finance such a move, but Frank wasn’t telling. It wasn’t too long, however, before the news leaked out that he intended financing his picture in a co-production deal between some Mexican gamblers and some of his Vegas friends, including Al “Vegas” da Prima and da Prima’s pal “Ears” Satriano. There was a hitch in the proceedings, though—an “unfortunate” death aboard da Prima’s yacht, anchored off Ensenada, where he and some of the boys had been whooping it up with a covey of girls from Gina’s in Tijuana.

  Da Prima’s current light-o’-love was none other than Babe’s stand-in, Patsy Doyle, who’d been running for Congress with the boys for some time. There was a fracas aboard the yacht, and the unlucky Patsy caught a bullet. Her body got washed up on Rosarita Beach, while the yacht hightailed it beyond the twelve-mile limit. Nobody paid much attention until the dizzy Louella came up with the garbled rumor that it wasn’t really Patsy who’d been shot, but Babe herself. When Frank heard this he merely laughed, reminding everyone that Babe was at that moment more than three thousand miles away, in South America. Louella was obliged to eat her column for breakfast. But then she turned around and stung Frank’s behind, charging that he was the one who’d deliberately started the rumor in the first place and that he’d done it as a cheap bid for some badly needed publicity to boost Babe’s sagging career.

  Ever one to take potshots at Lolly, Hedda declared the whole thing a tempest in a teapot; she had the real scam: not only was Babe a continent away from the scene of the crime, but she was romantically involved with the Peruvian Tin King, Conçon “Rollo” de Hualada, with whom she was currently whooping it up down in Buenos Aires.

  The movie business rejoiced that Babe hadn’t been the victim but, rather, her lowly stand-in, just another Hollywood trollop who’d got it through the heart with an Italian Biretta. Peroxide tootsies like Patsy were a dime a dozen, but to lose Babe Austrian and have her body washed up among the sand crabs, even though her career had been heading for Endsville—well, nobody wanted to see her go down the tubes. The unfortunate Patsy was buried near
Caliente, where she loved to play the ponies, and is remembered mainly for her appearance among thirty other blonde chorines in a little opus called Moonlight and Pretzels, which hit the screens back in ’34.

  Maybe Frank had actually begun the rumor; I wouldn’t have put it past him. By fair means or foul, a healthy boost was what he intended to give Babe’s career, though few knew then, as few know now, exactly how far he was willing to go to make it all pay off for Babe. You might say it had become a mania with him—that her star that had shone so brightly for so long should continue shining undimmed. And there was no doubt that she was badly in need of some rethinking. The aging process is generally accepted as being far more cruel on the female of the species than on the male, and this certainly was true for Babe, as for any other Hollywood sex symbol. Her career had been floundering, and it was a measure of Frank’s entrepreneurial shrewdness that he erased her from the scene at precisely the moment when such a removal was most appropriate, then returned her to the scene at an equally opportune moment.

  However Frankie managed it, there was a media “leak,” noting that Babe Austrian had been seen several times in Buenos Aires being squired about by this Sr. Conçon de Hualada, and later visiting some of the hill villages whose narrow thoroughfares she negotiated in a white Rolls-Royce, a vehicle hardly likely to obscure her presence south of the border.

  Speculation and wonderment again became rife as the old image of Babe Austrian suddenly took on a whole new aura. She was no longer the shopworn article the press had been making her out to be—passé, full-blown, even tarnished—but, rather, some striking, elusive creature whose voice and intonations were the more precious for having been lost to us for a period; a national treasure, the more highly to be cherished because she had lately been treated so indifferently, cast off like an old shoe.