The Property of a Lady (62 page)

“She opened her eyes suddenly and looked at him, puzzled. ‘Zev?’ she whispered. ‘Am I alive?’

“He could hardly speak he was so choked with emotion. ‘Yes,
milochka,’
he replied, ‘you are alive.’

“‘Good,’ she murmured, ‘I wouldn’t want to let you down with
Marietta.’

“He took her to the hospital, where they cleaned her up and gave her blood transfusions and told him there was no hope. He stayed by her bedside all night, holding her hand, praying for her, and wondering how he was going to break the news to me, but early in the morning—the crisis time when the doctors told him people usually die or else they rally and live—a little color crept into her face. She began to breathe more quietly, and by nine o’clock she was resting peacefully and they knew she would pull through. And then Zev went to find Doc Loco.

“The ‘doctor’ was picked up later by the police, his face beaten to a pulp. He was taken to jail and never heard
from again. The police also arrested Villaloso and charged him with racetrack fraud, and by noon that day he was on his way to Mexico City to await trial. Eventually, after months of delay, he was sentenced to ten years, but he was lucky to be alive—if you can call a Mexican jail ‘lucky.’ C. Z. Abrams was a powerful man, and he had used that power the way he thought best.

“Azaylee was like a broken doll, completely bewildered by what had happened to her. She kept insisting that it wasn’t true, that she had done nothing, and we were afraid to argue with her in case we upset her.

“She was weak and subdued, but when she was finally strong enough I tried to talk to her. She acted vague and strange and I knew at once we were in trouble. Zev called in a famous New York doctor who said she was lost under layers of different identities and suffering from a disassociation of personality. A person suffering from this psychosis is not a real character at all. She is not an individual but a ‘collective.’ It is impossible to know which is the true personality. Azaylee was not ‘a bad girl,’ she was a confused being who did not really know who she was. In her normal surroundings she would behave the ‘normal’ way we expected; in strange circumstances she would behave like another person and therefore do whatever was expected of that person. The doctor said she would need treatment for at least three years, maybe longer.

“So Azaylee began her new treatment and life went back to normal, although, of course, now we were never sure what ‘normal’ was.

“Zev shelved the Marietta movie she had made and canceled production of the next, and we concentrated on giving her a stable home life and just getting her well again. The final blow was that the doctors said she had been so badly damaged in the abortion that she would never be able to bear children. And afterward I thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all. You see, this was only the first of her troubles with men.”

Missie sighed as she glanced helplessly at Cal. “The years passed, we had tutors and she finished her high school education, but we dared not let her go away to college. Instead, she concentrated on her dancing. The psychiatrist said that Azaylee understood that what had happened was because of her mother and her confused childhood and she also understood now that it had happened to her and not ‘another girl.’ But he warned us he could never guarantee her stability, and all we could do was continue the therapy and hope one day she would be well enough to cope with normal life again.

“When she was eighteen we gave a little birthday party for her, just Rosa and Sam, Rachel, Dick, and Hannah. We went to the Cocoanut Grove and there was a cake with candles and she blushed when the band played ‘Happy Birthday.’ She was just the most sweet, naive, innocent girl you could ever imagine, and she looked so lovely in a pale-green dress and the ruby heart pendant O’Hara had given her when she was our bridesmaid. The table was full of little presents from everyone, especially Zev, who believed presents should come in multiples of at least a dozen. But his biggest present was the news that he had commissioned a script especially for her, a musical to be called
Flying High.”

“I remember it,” Cal exclaimed, smiling, “from too many sleepless nights in college watching the
Late Late Show
. She was wonderful.”

“Wasn’t she? And she enjoyed it so much. The doctor had given permission, and we all kept a careful eye on her, vetting everyone from her costar to the lowliest gofer on the set. Zev produced and Dick Nevern directed, and her sheer youth and exuberance came through.

“It was 1932 and Magic, like most of the big Hollywood studios, had weathered the Depression. Zev put a lot of money into promoting the movie but interviews with her were kept to the minimum, just the top Hollywood and
New York reporters. Still, her photograph was in all the fan magazines and suddenly she was a star.

“It didn’t go to her head. She just accepted it and carried on as usual, taking Rex, her dog, to the studios every day along with Baby, the puppy. By this time Rex had had his way with Zev’s bitch, Juliet, and we now had a household of
six
borzois. Azaylee loved them all so we kept them. She was busy learning her new dance routines for the next movie and at last she seemed completely happy, though of course her life was still very protected. Rachel was her only close friend. Rachel practically lived with us, and she also had a role in all the movies. By now she was dating Dick Nevera seriously and they were in love.

“The first signs of trouble came when Azaylee was twenty-one. She announced she had rented an apartment in Hollywood and was moving out. Soon after she met the man who was to become her dance partner, Milos Zoran, the son of a Polish immigrant farmworker who looked like everybody’s idea of a blond Greek god. She met him at dance class and saw immediately he was good, but of course it was when they danced together that the magic happened. They looked so perfect, both so blond and beautiful, he in white tie and tails and she in those soft, clinging chiffon gowns, dancing to Cole Porter and Jerome Kern. All those old standards were new to us then.

“The first movie was an instant success. The pair were ‘an item’ in the gossip columns, and of course we realized what must be going on. We tried, but there was no way to stop her, and when Zev threatened to fire Zoran she said if he did she would go too. Azaylee was on her own and living the life
she
wanted. Or was she?” Missie shook her head helplessly. “We never really knew.”

“Zoran’s influence grew stronger; soon he was choreographing their routines so
he
became the important figure and Azaylee told Zev that she wanted all billing to be changed to ‘Zoran and Adair,’ with his name in front and
hers second, and that he should get top billing over title in the next movie. Zev said sure he would do it, but of course he didn’t, and when Zoran strutted in to complain, he grabbed him by the lapels of his fancy new suit and told him that he had already put one guy behind bars who had tried to exploit Azaylee and he was not averse to putting another there. Zoran backed down but he walked out in the middle of the next movie. It almost destroyed Azaylee and we were right back to square one: the therapy, the protected private life—and no more movies until she was better.

“This became the pattern. As you probably know, she had several dance partners, but her most famous was Teddy Adams. ‘Adair and Adams’ is what she will be remembered for. She was the epitome of thirties glamour: She sang, she danced, she was beautiful and young, and the fact that her turbulent private life often hit the headlines only made her more fascinating. Zev always said later that you could bet any woman you met called Ava who had been born in the thirties had been named after Ava Adair.

“She would seem quite normal and happy for long periods of time, and then there would be another crisis. Zev masterminded her career and she was an enormous star, and as long as he was in charge she never made a bad movie. But then the final disaster happened. She met Jakey Jerome—and Grigori Solovsky.”

“On screen Azaylee was always the open, sunny girl everyone adored, but in private life she seemed to have a penchant for bad characters—good-looking, pimplike men who exploited her. Jakey Jerome seemed different.

“He was short and ugly but with a kind of charm. He had a ready smile and was an easy conversationalist, and he worked at Magic as a scriptwriter. Not a great one, just a regular hack turning out reissues of other people’s ideas, but he was good at that. He worked hard and, unlike a lot of the other writers, he didn’t drink too much. Zev liked him well enough. It was he who introduced them, and he thought no more about it until he heard they had been seen together in a corner booth at the Brown Derby. But he still wasn’t really worried about Jakey. He knew he wasn’t Azaylee’s type.

“Their friendship progressed and she began to bring him to the house to visit us. We saw he treated her gently, not bullying her like the others, and he didn’t seem to want to use her. He hadn’t moved in with her as her boyfriends usually did. By this time Rachel was married to Dick Nevern and they had two children—boys. I often caught Azaylee looking at them longingly, and I felt so sorry for her because she knew she would always be childless. We began to wonder if this was serious, if she was really in love at last.

“Zev gave Jakey a new position as a script supervisor with a raise in salary, and the first thing he did was spend
his entire month’s paycheck on a pair of antique Venetian mirrors Azaylee had admired in a store. She was so thrilled that he had bought her such a wonderful gift that she decided to have her sitting room redesigned around them. When it was finished she invited us to dinner, just Azaylee, Jakey, Zev, and myself.

“He was casual, easy, relaxed, and so was she. I thought I had never seen her look so well and I was grateful to him for being so good to her, helping her. It was 1937 and Azaylee was still only twenty-four years old, but of course she had been a star since she was sixteen. Jakey was twenty-nine and an unknown quantity. He never talked about his family except to say they were Jewish, that he was from Philadelphia, and that most of his family still lived in Poland.

“We admired the new all-white and crystal sitting room and the beautiful mirrors, and then Azaylee announced that Jakey wanted to say something. He stood up, cleared his throat, and then asked Zev formally for Azaylee’s hand in marriage—though of course he only knew her as ‘Ava.’ He was the perfect gentleman, deferential, even shy, though if you ever knew Jakey Jerome you would never believe that. Azaylee looked imploringly at me and said, ‘Oh, please,
please
, Missie,
say yes
…’ just the way she had when she had wanted to be in the movies. So of course we laughed and said yes and champagne was drunk and a wedding planned for October. A big one with all the trimmings. Azaylee seemed happy and completely rational, and we thought if Jakey could do that for her, then he would make her a good husband.

“After supper he said he had come across a script—a play, which he thought had the makings of a great musical. ‘How about letting Ava do it on Broadway first?’ he asked Zev. ‘And maybe do the movie later. That way you would have a double-header success. Besides, Ava says she would enjoy playing theater for a change.’

“Zev was surprised, but he agreed to read it. It wasn’t
wonderful, just a vehicle for her to dance and sing some pretty songs—Jakey had Irving Berlin in mind or Cole Porter, nothing but the best. He had bought the play for a few thousand dollars and he said he wanted to give it to Azaylee as an engagement present. How could Zev refuse to back it?

“Jakey did the rewrite and produced. Azaylee asked Dick to direct—his first stage job, as it was hers, but she trusted him. A theater was found for a March opening and Jakey set up an office on Broadway and found a co-star, Will Hunter, good-looking and talented enough to support Azaylee without stealing her thunder. When she was working she was always absolutely professional, but now she was devoted to her task and to Jakey. She put all her faith in him and I have to say that he did not let her down. After six turbulent weeks out of town,
Hollywood Girl
opened on Broadway on an icy March night. The audience didn’t seem to mind the cold. They applauded every number and at the end they gave Ava a standing ovation. I couldn’t help remembering my own little success in the Follies, though poor Ziegfeld was long since dead, and I knew how she must feel. I just sat there with tears streaming down my face. I was so proud of her. And of how far she had come—not only in her career, but in struggling back from never-never land. Tonight she was a whole person, Ava Adair, and she was beautiful and a success.

“We went on to Sardi’s for the party afterward, waiting nervously for the first editions of the newspapers. When they came we all cheered—they were unanimous in their praise—for Ava, Dick, and the music, that is. They didn’t think much of the story. But it didn’t matter. The crowds flocked to the theater, and
Hollywood Girl
made a fortune. Zev owned sixty percent and Jakey twenty. For the first time in his life Jakey was rich and he spent money like water, treating everyone to lunches at ‘21’ and presiding over
his
table at the Stork Club every night after the
show. He gave Azaylee a large diamond engagement ring to replace the tiny one that was all he had been able to afford before. And he moved from the small Broadway apartment over his office into a suite at the Plaza, opposite her hotel, the Sherry Netherland.