Starstruck

I
t was one of those nights in Hollywood, the kind that made gossip columnists and newspapermen and the announcers on newsreels say, “It was one of those nights in Hollywood.”

Searchlights swept the starlit sky. Flashbulbs popped, littering the ground with shattered glass like piles of diamonds. Down on Hollywood Boulevard, the marquee of Grauman’s Chinese Theater was ablaze with light, its copper roof and red lacquer columns emitting an otherworldly glow that gave it the aura of an ancient sacred temple.

And up the crimson carpet came the deities themselves, wrapped in pale satin and shining furs, striking poses for the photographers, pausing now and then to bestow a ruby-lipped
smile or extend a slim gloved hand to one lucky supplicant among the teeming throng of frantic fans.

Deep within the crush of people shouting and begging and brandishing autograph books, two teenage girls held on to each other for dear life.

“Margaret!” the smaller one shrieked. “Somebody just pinched me!”

“Never mind, Doris,” the one called Margaret shouted, expertly twisting her slim body this way and that through the crush. “Just keep hold of my hand. If we get separated we’ll never find each other again.”

Together, they wended their way toward the front, until at last they had a clear view of the blazing marquee.

“Look, Doris,” Margaret said excitedly, despite the fact that her head was being wedged beneath the less than fragrant armpit of a tall man in a damp tweed jacket. “Look at that marquee. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Squashed behind a very fat woman in a flowered dress, Doris jumped as a flashbulb popped right next to her face. “It’s awfully
bright
.”

“Well, if you’re a star, you get used to that,” Margaret said. “Diana Chesterfield told
Picture Palace
that when she was just starting out, she used to practice posing by shining a triple-watt flashlight in her eyes every night in front of the mirror.”

Turning her face toward the glare of the flashbulbs, Margaret demonstrated her idol’s technique. She had practiced it herself for hours back home in Pasadena.

“Do you think Mickey Rooney will be here?” Doris asked hopefully.

“Doris.” Margaret rolled her eyes. “This is an
Olympus
picture.”

“So?”

“So Mickey Rooney is under contract at MGM. At Olympus, instead of Mickey Rooney, they have—”

“Jimmy Molloy!” Doris’s shrieks of ecstasy pierced the din as Olympus’s biggest musical star cavorted down the aisle, his famously dazzling grin calibrated to a blinding level. Eyes bright below his swooping quiff of ginger-colored hair, he clapped a hand over his mouth and blew a big kiss in the girls’ direction. The photographers snapped away.

“Oh my Lord!” Doris cried. “I’m going to faint, Margaret. I am positively going to faint! But who’s that
girl
with him?” Her eyes narrowed jealously.

Margaret squinted through the lights to where a petite brunette in virginal white lace was signing autographs at the edge of the carpet, just a few feet away from Jimmy. “Oh! That’s Gabby Preston.”

“Who?”

“Gabby
Preston
. Honestly, Doris, sometimes, I think you don’t even read
Picture Palace
. She’s that singer that Olympus just signed to a seven-year deal. We heard her on the
Royal Gelatin Hour
on the radio the other day, singing ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me,’ don’t you remember? You thought she was swell?”

Doris glowered as Jimmy Molloy put his arms around the girl, playfully kissing her cheek for the photographers. “Well, I don’t anymore.”

“Oh, it’s just for show. They’re starring in the new Tully Toynbee picture together. Actors always go out with their costars for publicity,” Margaret said knowingly.

“Jimmy wouldn’t do that. After all, he told
Picture Palace
that his greatest ambition was ‘finding true love.’ ” Doris closed her eyes in a halfway swoon. “Isn’t that the most romantic thing you ever heard?”

Margaret laughed at her friend. “Really, Doris, there’s no need to be so starstruck. They’re just people.”

Jimmy and Gabby were halfway up the red carpet when a fresh chorus of screams erupted from the crowd. A gleaming black Duesenberg pulled up, and Dane Forrest, Olympus Studios’ most famous leading man, emerged. Standing at the edge of the red carpet, he cast a moody gaze out at the cheering fans, not even bothering to smile for the photographers suddenly swarming around him.

Back home in Pasadena, pictures of Diana Chesterfield might cover Margaret’s bedroom walls, but Dane Forrest, in all his brooding, black-haired glory, occupied the otherwise bare place of honor above her bed so he could be the last thing she saw before she went to sleep at night and the first thing she saw when she woke up in the morning. And now here he was, standing ten feet away from her, in the flesh. She didn’t know whether to cry or to scream or to be sick. She felt as if she had just swallowed a hummingbird and it was beating its wings against her chest and throat, frantically trying to get out.

“Oooh,” Doris murmured teasingly beside her. “Who’s starstruck now?”

But Margaret was hardly the only one. Next to the girls, the fat woman in the flowered dress was so overwhelmed it seemed she was about to collapse in a fit. “Mr. Forrest!” she screeched, her face as red as a strawberry. “Over here! Mr. Forrest!
Mr. Forrest! I love you!
”

Yet Dane Forrest seemed to take no notice. Having completed his minute or two of perfunctory posing, he strode purposefully up the red carpet with nary a wave, although he did pass by so close that Margaret thought she caught a musky hint of his cologne wafting from the collar of his immaculately tailored tuxedo. The odor suffused her with such desperate longing that she had to clutch Doris’s hand, willing herself not to faint.

Doris was less impressed. “What’s his problem? He looks like such a grouch.”

“Dane Forrest is
not
a grouch,” Margaret insisted. “He’s brooding and sensitive and he hates crowds, like all real artists.”

“Well, why isn’t he with Diana, then?” Dane Forrest and Diana Chesterfield were widely recognized as Hollywood’s most beautiful couple, both on- and off-screen. There were regular photographs of them in
Picture Palace
and
Photoplay
and all the magazines dining and dancing and looking terribly glamorous and in love. For him not to escort her to such an important premiere was unthinkable. Doris grinned. “Maybe they broke up, Margie. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

“No.” Margaret shook her head. “She’s just making a grand entrance. Look. Here she comes now.”

At least three spans longer than any of the rest, the approaching limousine was painted the palest, most delicate of eggshell blues. It was a trademark of Diana Chesterfield’s that her cars matched her gowns: a coral-pink Rolls-Royce had echoed the spectacular pink tulle (and even more spectacular pink diamonds) she’d worn to the premiere of
Glissando
; a butter-yellow Duesenberg had perfectly complemented the confection of golden taffeta and the blonde mink she had donned for the opening night of
It Happened in Algiers
.

The photographers held their cameras poised in anticipation. Dane Forrest stood at the doors of the theater like a groom at the altar awaiting his bride. The crowd maintained a reverent hush in breathless anticipation of the descent of its idol from her gorgeous conveyance. Margaret gripped Doris’s hand, her heart swelling with buoyant adoration and furious envy, her knees spontaneously half bending in a kind of reflexive curtsey.

The car door swung smoothly open.

And a short, balding man with a pencil mustache climbed out of the car and walked sheepishly to the bank of microphones beneath the marquee.

In Glendale and Burbank and Santa Monica and Encino and Tarzana and Hancock Park, the folks listening intently on the radio clearly heard the man’s flat voice reading the following statement:

“On behalf of Olympus Studios, I regret to inform you that Diana Chesterfield is sadly unable to be with us tonight. Miss Chesterfield sends her sincerest good wishes and humblest thanks to all her fans, for whose support and admiration she is eternally grateful. She hopes all of you will enjoy her latest picture,
Manhattan Memories
.”