Tell-All (11 page)

More hammer blows fall; with each the sound rings louder, then louder as we dissolve to reveal the kitchen of Katherine Kenton, where I sit at the kitchen table, reading a screenplay titled
Space Race Rescue
penned by Lilly. I wear the black maid’s uniform, over it the bib apron. On my head the starched, lacy maid’s cap. The hammer blows continue, an audio bridge, now revealed to be an actual pounding sound coming from within the town house.

The blows ring more loud, more fast as we cut to a shot of the bed headboard in Miss Kathie’s boudoir, revealing the sounds as the headboard pounding the wall. The sexual coupling takes place below the bottom of the frame, barely outside the shot, but we can hear the heavy breathing of a man and a woman as the tempo and volume of the pounding increase. Each impact makes the framed paintings jump on the walls. The curtain tassels dangle and dance. The bedside pile of screenplays slumps to the floor.

On the page, as Lilly’s astronaut heart beats faster and
her hammer batters the box again and again, we hear the headboard of Miss Kathie’s bed slamming the wall, faster, until with one final, heroic pounding, the lights of the space module flicker back to life. The pounding ceases as all the various gauges and dials flare back to full power and, framed in the module’s little window,
John Glenn
gives Lilly the thumbs-up. Tears of horror and relief stream down the face inside his astronaut helmet.

In the background of the kitchen, two hairy feet appear at the top of the servants’ staircase, two hairy ankles descend from the second floor, two hairy knees, then the hem of a white terry-cloth bathrobe. Another step down, and the cloth belt appears, tied around a narrow waist; two hairy hands hang on either side. A chest appears, the terry cloth embroidered with a monogram:
O.D
. The robe of the long-deceased fourth “was-band.” Another step reveals the face of
Webster Carlton Westward III
. Those bright brown root-beer eyes. A smile parts his face, pulling at the corners of his mouth, spreading them like a stage curtain, and this American specimen says, “Good morning, Hazie.”

On the page, Lilly Hellman struggles in the cold, black void of space, dragging herself along the hull of the
Friendship 7
, fighting her way back to the air lock.

The Webster specimen opens a kitchen cabinet and collects the percolator. He pulls out a drawer and retrieves the power cord. He does each task on his first attempt, without hunting. He reaches into the icebox without looking and removes the metal can of coffee grounds. From another cabinet, he takes the morning tray—not the silver tea tray nor the dinner tray. It’s clear he knows what’s what in this household and where each item is hidden.

This
Webster C. Westward III
appears to be a quick study. One of those clever, smiling young men
Terrence Terry
warned my Miss Kathie about. Those jackals. A magpie.

Spooning coffee grounds into the percolator basket, the Webster specimen says, “If you’ll permit me to ask, Hazie, do you know whom you remind me of?”

Without looking up from the page, Lilly suffocating in the freezing stratosphere, I say,
Thelma Ritter
.

I was
Thelma Ritter
before
Thelma Ritter
was
Thelma Ritter
.

To see how I walk, watch
Ann Dvorak
walk across the street in the film
Housewife
. You want to see me worried, watch how
Miriam Hopkins
puckers her brow in
Old Acquaintance
. Every hand gesture, every bit of physical business I ever perfected, some nobody came along and stole.
Pier Angeli
’s laugh started out as my laugh. The way
Gilda Gray
dances the rumba, she swiped it from me. How
Marilyn Monroe
sings she got by hearing me.

The damned copycats. There’s worse that people can steal from you than money.

Someone steals your pearls and you can simply buy another strand. But if they steal your hairstyle, or the signature manner in which you throw a kiss, it’s much more difficult to replace.

Back a long time ago, I was in motion pictures. Back before I met up with my Miss Kathie.

Nowadays, I don’t laugh. I don’t sing or dance. Or kiss. My hair styles itself.

It’s like
Terrence Terry
tried to warn Miss Kathie: the whole world consists of nothing but vultures and hyenas wanting to take a bite out of you. Your heart or tongue or violet eyes. To eat up just your best part for their breakfast.

You want to see
Tallulah Bankhead
, not just her playing
Julie Marsden
in
Jezebel
, or being
Regina Giddens
in
The Little Foxes
, but the real Tallulah, you only need to watch
Bette Davis
in
All About Eve
. It was
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
who wrote
Margo Channing
based on his poor mother, the actress
Johanna Blumenau
, but it was Davis who cozied up to Tallulah long enough to learn her mannerisms. Tallulah’s delivery and how she walked. How she’d enter a room. The way Tallulah’s voice got screechy after one bourbon. How, after four of them, her eyelids hung, half closed as steamed clams.

Of course, not everybody was in on the joke. It could be some
Andy Devine
or
Slim Pickens
farmers in
Sioux Falls
couldn’t see Davis doing a minstrel-show version of Tallulah, but everybody else saw. Imagine a real performer watching you drink at a hundred parties, memorizing you while you’re upset and spitting in the face of
William Dieterle
, then making you into a stage routine and performing you for the whole world to laugh at. The same as how that big shit
Orson Welles
made fun of
Willy Hearst
and poor
Marion Davies
.

The Webster specimen holds the percolator in the sink, filling it with water from the faucet. He assembles the basket, the spindle and the lid, plugs the female end of the electric cord into the percolator base and plugs the male end into the power socket.

Folks in
Little Rock
and
Boulder
and
Budapest
, most folks don’t know what’s not true. That bunch of
Chill Wills
rubes. So the whole entire world gets thinking that cartoon version Miss Davis created is the real you.

Bette Davis
built her career playing that burlesque version of
Tallulah Bankhead
.

Nowadays, if anybody mentions poor
Willy Hearst
, you
picture Welles, fat and shouting at
Mona Darkfeather
, chasing
Peel Trenton
down some stairs. For anybody who never shook hands with Tallulah, she’s that bug-eyed harpy with that horrid fringe of pale, loose skin flapping along Davis’s jawline.

It boils down to the fact that we’re all jackals feeding off each other.

The percolator pops and snaps. A splash of brown coffee perks inside the glass bulb on top. A wisp of white steam leaks from the chrome spout.

The Webster specimen’s got it backward, I tell him.
Thelma Ritter
is a copy of me. Her walk and her diction, her timing and delivery, all of it was coached. At first
Joe Mankiewicz
turned up everywhere. I might sit down to dinner next to
Fay Bainter
, across the table from
Jessie Matthews
, who only went anywhere with her husband,
Sonnie Hale
, next to him
Alison Skipworth
, on my other side
Pierre Watkin
, and Joe would be way up above the salt, not talking to anyone, never taking his eyes off me. He’d study me like I was a book or a blueprint, his diseased fingers bleeding through the tips of his white gloves.

In his movie,
Thelma Ritter
wearing those cardigan sweaters half unbuttoned with the sleeves pushed back to the elbow, that was me. Thelma was playing me, only bigger. Hammy. My same way of parting my hair down the middle. Those eyes that follow every move at the same time. Not many folks knew, but the folks I knew,
they
knew. My given name is Hazie. The character’s called Birdie. Mankiewicz, that rat bastard, he wasn’t fooling anyone in our crowd.

It’s like seeing
Franklin Pangborn
play his fairy hairdresser.
Al Jolson
in blackface. Or
Everett Sloane
doing his hook-nosed-Jew
routine. Except this two-ton joke lands on only you, you don’t share the load with nobody else, and folks expect you to laugh along or you’re being a poor sport.

If you need more convincing, tell me the name of the broad who sat for
Leonardo da Vinci’s
painting the
Mona Lisa
. People remember poor
Marion Davies
, and they picture
Dorothy Comingore
, drinking and hunched over those enormous
Gregg Toland
jigsaw puzzles on an
RKO
soundstage.

You talk about art imitating life, well, the reverse is true.

On the scripted page,
John Glenn
creeps down the outside of the space capsule hull, embracing Lilly Hellman and pulling her to safety. Inside the window of the orbiting capsule, we see them kissing passionately. We hear the buzz of a hundred zippers ripping open and see a flash of pink skin as they tear the clothes from each other. In zero gravity, Lilly’s bare breasts stand up, firm and perfect. Her purple nipples erect, hard as flint arrowheads.

In the kitchen, the Webster specimen places the percolator on the morning tray. Two cups and saucers. The sugar bowl and creamer.

When I met her, Kathie Kenton was nothing. A Hollywood hopeful. A hostess in a steakhouse, handing out menus and clearing dirty plates. My job is not that of a stylist or press agent, but I’ve groomed her to become a symbol for millions of women. Across time, billions. I may not be an actor, but I’ve created a model of strength to which women can aspire. A living example of their own incredible possible potential.

Sitting at the table, I reach over and take a silver teaspoon from one saucer. With the spoon bowl cupped to my mouth,
I exhale moist breath to fog the metal. I lower the spoon to the hem of my lacy maid’s apron and polish the silver between folds of the fabric.

In the Hellman screenplay, through the window of the space capsule we see Lilly’s bare neck and shoulders arch with pleasure, the muscles rippling and shuddering as Glenn’s lips and tongue trail down between her floating, weightless breasts. The fantasy dissolves as their panting breath fogs the window glass.

Buffing the spoon, I say, “Please don’t hurt her.…” Placing the spoon back on the tray, I say, “I’ll kill you before I’ll let you hurt Miss Kathie.”

With two fingers I pluck the starched white maid’s cap from my head, the hairpins pulling stray hairs, plucking and tearing away a few long hairs. Rising to my feet, I reach up with the cap between my hands, saying, “You’re not as clever as you think, young man,” and I set the maid’s cap on the very tip-top of this Webster’s beautiful head.

Cut to me, running, a trench coat worn over my maid’s uniform flapping open in front to reveal the black dress and white apron within. In a tracking shot, I hurry along a path in the park, somewhere between the dairy and the carousel, my open mouth gasping. In the reverse angle, we see that I’m rushing toward the rough boulders and outcroppings of the
Kinderberg
rocks. Matching my eye line, we see that I’m focused on a pavilion built of brick, in the shape of a stop sign, perched high atop the rocks.

Intercut this with a close-up shot of the telephone which sits on the foyer table of Miss Kathie’s town house. The telephone rings.

Cut to me running along, my hair fluttering out behind my bare head. My knees tossing the apron of my uniform into the air.

Cut to the telephone, ringing and ringing.

Cut to me veering around joggers. I’m dodging mothers pushing baby carriages and people walking dogs. I jump dog leashes like so many hurdles. In front of me, the brick pavilion atop
Kinderberg
looms larger, and we can hear the nightmarish calliope music of the nearby carousel.

Cut to the foyer telephone as it continues to ring.

As I arrive at the brick pavilion, we see an assortment of people, almost all of them elderly men seated in pairs at small tables, each pair of men hunched over the white and black pieces of a chess game. Some tables sit within the pavilion. Some tables outside, under the overhang of its roof. This, the chess pavilion built by
Bernard Baruch
.

Cut back to the close-up of the foyer telephone, its ringing cut off as fingers enter the shot and lift the receiver. We follow the receiver to a face, my face. To make it easier, picture
Thelma Ritter
’s face answering the telephone. In this intercut flashback we watch me say, “Kenton residence.”

Still watching me, my reaction as I answer the telephone, we hear the voice of my Miss Kathie say, “Please come quick.” Over the telephone, she says, “Hurry, he’s going to kill me!”

In the park, I weave between the tables shared by chess players. On the table between most pairs sits a clock displaying two faces. As each player moves a piece, he slaps a button atop the clock, making the second hand on one clock face stop clicking and making the other second hand begin. At one table, an old-man version of
Lex Barker
tells another old
Peter Ustinov
, “Check.” He slaps the two-faced clock.

Seated at the edge of the crowd, my Miss Kathie sits alone at a table, the top inlaid with the white and black squares of a chessboard. Instead of pawns, knights and rooks, the table holds only a thick ream of white paper. Both her hands clutch the stack of paper, as thick as the script for a
Cecil B. DeMille
epic. The lenses of dark sunglasses hide her violet eyes. A silk
Hermès
scarf, tied under her chin, hides her movie-star profile. Reflected in her glasses, we see two of me approach. Twin
Thelma Ritter
s.