American Blonde (8 page)

I was halfway down the stairs when I saw Mudge, still in costume, walking out the door of her star suite. She glanced around, to her left, to her right. I opened my mouth to call to her, hand in the air, but then she looked behind her, nodding to someone, and Nigel Gray appeared. Without a word, she went one way and he went the other.

1946 ~ 1947

The American Blonde

by Louella O. Parsons

Who is the young lady who stands to captivate a nation?

From the obscurity of an ordinary, simple home this patriotic Cinderella has quickly vaulted to the top in the motion picture world with a role—her very first—in the biggest picture of all time . . .
Home of the Brave
. A picture which is being rewritten just for her.

For starters, the girl can sing. But there is something in her voice that transcends mere vocalizing. Kit Rogers is a blonde-haired, green-eyed beauty, just nineteen years old. Orphaned quite young, she is strictly the all-American girl, with a charm and sparkle that stamps her a daughter of Uncle Sam. As if that charm and sparkle weren’t enough, she was born on February 22, a birthday she shares with President George Washington.

Miss Rogers made international headlines this past summer as the brave and daring aviatrix who flew for the WASP and her country, rescuing her brother from death and thwarting the Germans’ plans for victory. Miss Rogers was selected by Mr. Louis B. Mayer as being the ideal young American girl of today. She has given up her smart little uniform for pretty dresses and high-heeled shoes, and traded in her pistol for a lipstick. Beauty professionals predict her hair color, American Blonde, will become the top requested hair color in the country, once
Home of the Brave
debuts.

“When Miss Rogers came into my office,” Mr. Mayer tells me, “I knew she had that rare thing—personality. She is beautiful, but more essential than beauty is that quality known as screen magnetism, which she has in spades.”

“I was so happy when they offered me a contract,” declares Miss Rogers, “and I think Hollywood is the most beautiful place in the world. If only my poor dead parents could be here to see my dreams come true.”

H
ome of the Brave
was, at its core, the story of two brothers, Daniel (Nigel Gray) and Joseph (Hal MacGinnis), soldiers in the Revolutionary War who are fighting for their country and for the love of the same woman, Mallory Rourke (Mudge). While the brothers are at battle, Mallory and her sister, Anne (Phoebe Phillips)—secretly pining for Daniel—protect the family homestead, and Mallory smuggles secrets to the Patriots. Six years after the story begins, at war’s end—after he has lost his brother and all of his friends and nearly lost his own life being run through by a sword—Daniel comes limping home to brave Mallory (as poor Anne watches on), carrying the battle-scarred flag, never imagining that the woman he loves has been at war herself.

It was to be an epic picture, shot in Technicolor and featuring a cavalcade of Metro stars in cameos. It would be MGM’s tribute to our returning heroes and to our triumphant nation.

In the opening scene, George Washington (Webster Hayes), George Ross (Edward Arnold), and Robert Morris (Frank Morgan) call on young widow Betsy Ross (Kit Rogers), who, cut off from her family and struggling during wartime while still mourning the death of her husband, has no choice but to earn money mending uniforms and making tents and blankets for the Continental Army. When George Washington and his committee show her a sketch of the design for a national flag, she suggests the stars and stripes.

I was given seven scenes and three songs, one of them a kind of duet with Nigel Gray. The week before shooting my first scene, the two of us worked with Arthur Rosenstein in his studio. Rosie (as Nigel called him) was, with Sam Katz, in charge of the score. He was a large, white-haired bear of a man with glasses. After one time through the song, he pushed up his sleeves and announced, “Even though this isn’t a conventional duet, it’s still a duet, so we’re going to rehearse together until we get it right.”

We worked for two hours. Nigel was charming and polite. He wasn’t a natural singer, but he knew something about how to breathe and drop his jaw and pronounce his vowels so they were clear and you understood every line. He knew how to interpret, how to pull back and give more where needed. We went over how to raise the soft palate and lower the back of the tongue to create a round space for a greater sound. We went over how to elongate our pronunciation and cap off the vowels.

Rosie was tougher than Earl Brent and Bobby Tucker. Time and again, he stopped playing, swiveled around to face me, and said, “Singing involves the entire body. Your gestures, your movements. The way you raise an arm or close your hand, the expression on your face. All of these are every bit as important as your tone and phrasing. Again.” And he would swivel back to the piano keys and start playing.

All my life, whenever I’d felt like singing, I sang. No thought. No worries. But now it wasn’t as simple as that. With each teacher—Rosie in particular—I was in the process of stripping away everything I thought I knew, and rebuilding as if I’d never sung before.

When Rosie became frustrated and I became frustrated, Nigel said, “I’d like to try something else. Let’s see what happens if Kit and I move around a bit. See how we do when there’s more than one thing going on. Maybe it’ll help us to stop thinking it all to death.” He was doing this for me, I knew. Nigel Gray didn’t have to think things to death because he did everything easily. He took my hand and spun me as Rosie started to play. I spun out and then back into Nigel. Closer in, his eyes looked blue or maybe violet.

My verse came first, so I started to sing. He twirled me and spun me. His turn to sing, as we fox-trotted and waltzed across the room. Our voices joined on the chorus. I focused on my breath, on my diaphragm, on my phrasing, on the meaning of the words—so much to remember. It was the same as counting while you danced: one-two-three-step, one-two-three-step. But then I wasn’t thinking it, I was feeling it, and all the one-two-three-steps went away, and I was Jane again, being swept under the moon into the arms of Nigel Gray.

On January 22, I reported to the set, a jumble of wires and lights and people rushing this way and that. The most I’d had time to do was learn my lines and be fitted for my costume, a hand-me-down from Esther Williams, whose name was still stitched into the label. Mudge had promised to be there, but so far I hadn’t seen her.

At nine thirty a.m., I rehearsed my first scene with Mr. Hayes, Mr. Arnold, and Mr. Morgan, towering over all of them by a solid two inches. I only had six lines, not counting a few lines of a song. George Washington and his men would do most of the talking. Still, director Leslie Edgar, who I also towered over, took the time to explain to me each movement, each expression, in his soft, patient voice.

As I listened, as we ran through it, I did my best not to be too tall, while also telling myself what everybody else had been telling me: “Relax, don’t be afraid, remember not to drop your
G
’s, be sure to hit your marks, know when to speak, don’t shout, don’t whisper, don’t look at the camera, don’t fidget, remember your lines, don’t stand there looking like a blank wall when the others are speaking, react, listen,
be
Betsy Ross!”

After we ran through it once, Mr. Hayes started bellowing for wardrobe. A girl scurried forward and bent down beside me. She tugged at my skirt, and set a pair of flats on the floor.

When the flats were firmly on my feet, Hayes barked, “She’s still too tall.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “But this is as short as I get.”

Nearly three hours later, I sat alone, skirts carefully smoothed and arranged, in the window seat of Betsy Ross’s parlor. Suddenly I was twelve years old again and at the Alluvial Fair, my first time singing alone in public. I stitched the flag and began to sing. I felt strange and stiff. I could feel my hands and my back tensing up until they ached, and then I gazed out the window. There, out of sight of the cameras, but sitting where I could see her, was Mudge. She was dressed in a smart navy suit—the Santiago Blues, our official WASP uniform. As she caught my eye, she touched the cap in a salute.

Sew thirteen stars in a field of blue—

Sew loss and death and wars that cease—

Sew thirteen stars in a field of blue—

Sew hope, sew promise and peace.

I stitched the flag and looked out the window at Mudge and that navy uniform and I thought of my brothers—Johnny Clay, Linc, Beachard—and all the men I knew and women too, including Mudge and myself, who had worn the stars and stripes.

We shot the scene three times, and when it was over and I’d gotten through it, my face was hot and my palms were hot and I thought: You did it, Velva Jean. You made it through your first day. Mudge and Leslie Edgar told me I was good, that I’d have a long career, and then Mudge was whisked off to wardrobe and Les was whisked back to the set. I stood by myself feeling lit up and limitless, and wanting the moment to go on and on.

“Very nice, Miss Rogers.”

I turned to see Harriet Fields, who taught pop singing. “Miss Fields?”

“Mr. Katz asked me to be here for the first song.”

“What did you think?”

She smiled in an apologetic way. “As I said, it was very nice. But I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to tell you right now that no one expects you to be Judy Garland. Just feel comfortable with the songs you have to sing and do the best you can. ”

As I watched her walk away, my face and palms were three times hotter.
No one expects me to be Judy Garland? Well, that’s fine. Because I’m going to be better than Judy Garland. Just you wait and see.

A voice behind me said, “She can go to hell.” Sam Weldon stood, script under his arm, smiling at me with one corner of his mouth. “The question is how do you think you did?”

“I think I was pretty good, better than I expected to be.” I tried to sound calm and cool, but my voice cracked. We came out of the soundstage and started toward the dressing rooms.

“You were better than I expected you to be too.”

“Thanks.”

“You might remember that flattery isn’t my strong suit.”

“I do.” In the sunshine, I could feel the anger fading a little. “The thing that makes me maddest is she’s never given me a chance. From day one, it’s been ‘Judy this’ and ‘Judy that.’ I’d rather be judged on what I can do instead of who I’m not.”

When we reached the stairs to my dressing room, I paused before going up. Sam draped an arm across the railing. “You know it’s a shame.”

“What’s a shame?”

“That I don’t date actresses. After that performance today, you proved you are one.”

He still wore a cocky grin, but the expression in his eyes was sincere enough for me to say, “Thanks, Sam. Really.”

“Don’t mention it. Unless, of course . . .” He looked at me and I looked at him, and there was a kind of hum in the air as neither of us said anything. Suddenly, he leaned in and kissed me. He kissed me like there was no question that I would kiss him back, as if he had every right to kiss me outside my dressing room, in plain sight of everyone, his hands on either side of my face. I felt my arms reaching for him, wanting to wind around his neck, as if they had a mind of their own, and then I broke away and slapped him.

I don’t know which of us was more surprised. He put his hand to his mouth, and said, “Jesus, Pipes.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t go around kissing people like that.”

“I don’t go around kissing people. I thought I’d try kissing you. Let’s face it, we’ve been wanting to since the first time we met.”

“I haven’t.”

“You’re not the only one. I’ve been thinking about it too.” When I didn’t say anything, he started to laugh. He said, “You should see your face.” He laughed till he had to wipe the tears from his eyes. I could still hear him as I ran upstairs and went inside and shut the door.

January 26, 1946

Dear girl:

Thank you for your thoughtful Christmas gifts, and for the checks, which I wish you wouldn’t send. We got along fine before, and I worry you don’t keep enough for yourself. I’m putting most of the money away for the children, so that they can go to college if they want to. It’s also there in case you need it someday.

Johnny Clay left here in November, and we haven’t heard from him since. He said he was going to see a friend, and after that, he wasn’t sure. I don’t want you to worry that you haven’t heard from him. That boy is just trying to find himself, Velva Jean, like everyone else after this war. You have to give him time.

Don’t you worry about us either. In spite of a hard winter, we’re all in good health, and everyone sends their love. Ruby Poole’s baby came early—a little girl they’re calling Mollie. Mama and baby are doing fine. We can’t wait to see this picture of yours and to see your sweet face.

Granny says to tell you she’s proud of you. You always were one to put your mind to the things you want and do them. You remind me of your mama in that way.

Love,

Daddy Hoyt