“Dear, dear,” he said, “what have you done to Zsa Zsa Gabor?”
“Who is that?” I asked.
“The Hungarian bombshell,” said Tony. “You just drove her out of the party fuming!”
“Maybe she didn’t approve of my sweater,” I said. “I wouldn’t have worn it if I’d known it was a party.”
“Oh no,” said Tony. “It’s deeper than that. Zsa Zsa said Sarah and I couldn’t expect nice people to remain at our party if people like you joined it. Now, frankly, Marilyn—what in heaven’s name did you do to her?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I never even saw her before.”
I walked over to have a look at this Hungarian bombshell. I saw she was one of those blondes who put on ten years if you take a close look at them. I also saw that the tall, handsome man she was clucking and making other Hungarian chicken noises at was George Sanders. I learned from Tony beside me that Mr. Sanders was her husband.
Poor Mr. Sanders, he had made that stairway speech once too often.
13
I was to go to a number of fancy Hollywood parties and stand among the glamorous figures dressed as well as any of them and laugh as if I were overcome with joy, but I never felt any more at ease than I did the first time I watched from the hallway.
The chief fun people get out of those parties comes the next day when they are able to spread the news of the famous people with whom they associated at So-and-So’s house. Most parties are run on the star system. In Hollywood a star isn’t only an actor or actress or movie executive. It can also be somebody who has recently been arrested for something, or beaten up or exposed in a love triangle. If it was played up in the newspapers then this person is treated as a social star as long as his or her publicity continues.
I don’t know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood important people can’t stand to be invited someplace that isn’t full of other important people. They don’t mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners. But if a star or a studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened as if somebody was trying to demote them.
I could never understand why important people are always so eager to dress up and come together to look at each other. Maybe three or four of them will have something to say to somebody, but the twenty or thirty others will just sit around like lumps on a log and stare at each other with false smiles. The host usually bustles about trying to get the guests involved in some kind of a game or guessing contest. Or he tries to get somebody to make a speech about something so as to start a general argument. But usually the guests fail to respond, and the party just drags on with nothing happening till the Sandman arrives. This is the signal for the guests to start leaving. Nearly everybody draws the line at falling asleep outright at a party.
The reason I went to parties of this sort was to advertise myself. There was always the possibility that someone might insult me or make a pass at me, which would be good publicity if it got into the movie columns. But even if nothing extra happened, just to be reported in the movie columns as having been present at a movie society gathering is very good publicity. Sometimes it is the only favorable mention the movie queens can get. There was also the consideration that if my studio bosses saw me standing among the regular movie stars they might get to thinking of me as a star also.
Going out socially in this fashion was the hardest part of my campaign to make good. But after a few months, I learned how to reduce the boredom considerably. This was to arrive around two hours late at a party. You not only make a special entrance, which was good advertising, but nearly everybody was likely to be drunk by that time. Important people are much more interesting when they are drunk and seem much more like human beings.
There is another side of a Hollywood party that is very important socially. It is a place where romances are made and unmade. Nearly everybody who attends an important party not only hopes to get favorably mentioned in the movie columns but also to fall in love or get started on a new seduction before the evening is over. It is hard to explain how you can fall in love while you are being bored to death, but I know it’s true, because it happened to me several times.
As soon as I could afford an evening gown, I bought the loudest one I could find. It was a bright red low cut dress, and my arrival in it usually infuriated half the women present. I was sorry in a way to do this, but I had a long way to go, and I needed a lot of advertising to get there.
The first fame I achieved was a wave of gossip that identified me as Joe Schenck’s girl. Mr. Schenck had invited me to his Beverly Hills mansion for dinner one evening. Then he fell into the habit of inviting me two or three times a week.
I went to Mr. Schenck’s mansion the first few times because he was one of the heads of my studio. After that I went because I liked him. Also the food was very good, and there were always important people at the table. These weren’t party figures but were Mr. Schenck’s personal friends.
I seldom spoke three words during dinner but would sit at Mr. Schenck’s elbow and listen like a sponge. The fact that people began to talk about me being Joe Schenck’s girl didn’t annoy me at first. But later it did annoy me. Mr. Schenck never so much as laid a finger on my wrist, or tried to. He was interested in me because I was a good table ornament and because I was what he called an “offbeat” personality.
I liked sitting around the fireplace with Mr. Schenck and hearing him talk about love and sex. He was full of wisdom on these subjects, like some great explorer. I also liked to look at his face. It was as much the face of a town as of a man. The whole history of Hollywood was in it.
Perhaps the chief reason I was happy to have won Mr. Schenck’s friendship was the great feeling of security it gave me. As a friend and protegee of one of the heads of my own studio, what could go wrong for me?
I got the answer to that question one Monday morning. I was called into the casting department and informed that I was being dropped by the studio and that my presence would no longer be required. I couldn’t talk. I sat listening and unable to move.
The casting official explained that I had been given several chances and that while I had acquitted myself fairly well it was the opinion of the studio that I was not photogenic. That was the reason, he said, that Mr. Zanuck had had me cut out of the pictures in which I had played bit parts.
“Mr. Zanuck feels that you may turn into an actress sometime,” said the official, “but that your type of looks is definitely against you.”
I went to my room and lay down in bed and cried. I cried for a week. I didn’t eat or talk or comb my hair. I kept crying as if I were at a funeral burying Marilyn Monroe.
It wasn’t only that I’d been fired. If they had dropped me because I couldn’t act it would have been bad enough. But it wouldn’t have been fatal. I could learn, improve, and become an actress. But how could I ever change my looks? And I’d thought that was the part of me that couldn’t miss!
And imagine how wrong my looks must be if even Mr. Schenck had to agree to fire me. I lay crying day after day. I hated myself for having been such a fool and had illusions about how attractive I was. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. Something horrible had happened. I wasn’t attractive. I saw a coarse, crude-looking blonde. I was looking at myself with Mr. Zanuck’s eyes. And I saw what he had seen—a girl whose looks were too big a handicap for a career in the movies.
The phone rang. Mr. Schenck’s secretary invited me to dinner. I went. I sat through the evening feeling too ashamed to look into anyone’s eyes. That’s the way you feel when you’re beaten inside. You don’t feel angry at those who’ve beaten you. You just feel ashamed. I had tasted this shame early—when a family would kick me out and send me back to the orphanage.
When we were sitting in the living room Mr. Schenck said to me, “How are things going at the studio?”
I smiled at him because I was glad he hadn’t had a hand in my being fired.
“I lost my job there last week,” I said.
Mr. Schenck looked at me and I saw a thousand stories in his face—stories of all the girls he had known who
