Lone star

I thought of a villain out of a nineteenth-century stage melodrama. I sighed. These two men would never be friends in any world other than Hollywood.

When Warner stopped talking, Stevens started to say something, but Warner cut him off. “Edna has to meet the press.”

Soundstage B, where Giant was being filmed, buzzed that afternoon, not with assistant directors and best boys and costume girls, but with reporters and photographers, led by a fussy Hedda Hopper. The set itself was properly movieland: carefully positioned props, bits of Texas gimmicky, weathered lariats and saddles, even the vintage 1924 Rolls Royce touring car used in the movie. Flashbulbs popped, blinding. Photographers screamed requests, one more shot, just one. Hedda Hopper chatted with Chill Wills. Jane Withers leaned in to kiss her. I sat in a canvas-backed chair, gaudily stenciled with my name in blocky black letters: EDNA FERBER. I wondered, idly, if I could cram it into my suitcase. It would be quite the conversation piece at one of my dinners. Edna on set. The novelist on location. Noel Coward would hoot. George Kaufman would snicker; he’d quip that I was the Rita Hayworth of bestsellerdom. Dick Rodgers would steal it, hold it for ransom. Someone snapped my picture, and, trancelike, I muttered, “Yes, I love what they’ve done to my novel.” Yes, yes, of course. I posed and smiled, a wide-eyed Mary Pickford agog at the Hollywood fuss and frenzy.

Jack Warner introduced me to the press as “the little lady who started the new civil war in Texas,” alluding to the fury my novel had caused, with its view of Texas smugness, shallowness, and intolerance. Now, aptly, he quoted my favorite line. “What littleness is all this bigness hiding?” Everyone laughed. Score one for Warner. But I wondered at the irony of his using the sentence.

Rock Hudson, I decided, was trying hard to impress me. Not only that, he was too tall. Surely over six feet four, and broad-shouldered, a stone wall. Wisconsin lumberjack, with that granite chin and those long arms, but the manner was too obsequious, too slick. After all, I was but five feet tall, tiny-maybe tinier than ever, as age stooped me-so now I had to look way up, since he made no effort to dip down to me. The effort was a little like a tourist looking up at the Empire State Building and realizing, finally, it wasn’t worth the neck strain. When I called him “Sonny,” he seemed shocked. Maybe he was savvy enough to realize that the epithet was my name for all young men in disfavor.

“Miss Ferber,” he said, still not stooping, “an honor.”

I bit my tongue. “The honor is all yours,” I said. He chuckled.

I heard someone muttering that Jimmy was late, and I saw Rock twist his head, eavesdropping. The smile disappeared. Stevens had demanded the major cast be there-in full regalia, head-to-toe costume and makeup. Mercy had told me that Jimmy often balked at Stevens’ demands, disliking the man’s dictatorial manner. He was used to the free-flowing, Method-acting any-way-you-feel style of Nick Ray, the Bohemian director of Rebel Without a Cause, whose own mumbling speech and desultory direction appealed to Jimmy. Now, lamentably, Jimmy hadn’t bothered to show up. Stevens, hovering nearby, spat out under-his-breath commands to his aides, who scurried off like hyperventilating mice. Rock Hudson, still standing next to me-the tallest schoolboy at the birthday party-narrowed his eyes. “We’re not all so professional,” he confided to me.

I smiled, as a camera popped in my eyes. “Meaning what?”

“Jimmy doesn’t take some things seriously.”

I felt the need to defend the boy I scarcely knew. “Jimmy seems to listen to his own clock.”

Rock widened his eyes. “He’s…unreliable.” Again, the flirtatious smile. “Such boys are dangerous.”

I stared up at him: the stone-carved face, cynosure of millions, Modern Screen’s actor of the year, the all-American male, so emphatically wrought he seemed almost a facade of a building. Dressed as a rich ranch baron, with pristine white linen suit and ten-gallon white hat, he seemed a statue in a public park. Soon a flock of pigeons would discover him. “Ma’am,” he was saying, oddly speaking in his Texas drawl, in character, “in Marfa, Jimmy and I shared a house. Days would go by and he wouldn’t say a single word to me.”

“Well…”

“He never smiled.”

I’d heard the stories. Jimmy and Rock, water and electricity. Norman Rockwell and a Village Beatnik poet, co-habitating. Deadly.

“It’s a new generation,” I said, a little lamely.

Rock would have none of it. “I’ve seen the future, then, and it doesn’t take a bath.”

I sidled away, my back to him. Luckily Liz Taylor, herself late from makeup, rushed in, smiling. Tansi waved to her, as to an old friend. Rock, doubtless staring at my small but iron-rod back (though, I believed, neatly attired in a polka dot blue-and-white flare dress, clutch bag, and three-stranded pearls), mumbled something about wardrobe, and disappeared. One last camera pop made him turn and look, a rigid line of gleaming teeth. But the photographer was focused on the radiant Liz.

Arriving with two assistants pecking at her, Liz Taylor sallied up to me, took my hand, and thanked me for the role of Leslie Benedict. I smiled, a little flabbergasted. How beautiful the woman was. How stunning. A woman whose tinkling, nervous laugh and melodic timbre seemed perfect for her patrician, girlish beauty. And those violet eyes, riveting as cut gemstone. A raving beauty, reminding me of Lillian Russell, a beauty of another century-and more buxom. A different standard of beauty then, but compelling and magnetic. But Liz had a way of charming, tucking herself into me. When the photographers finished, we sat in a corner next to the out-of-place Rolls Royce, gabbing like sorority sisters, with me oddly at ease.

The subject turned to Jimmy. Liz pointed at George Stevens, conferring with some lackey, both their faces crimson. “George isn’t happy,” Liz said. “Jimmy is supposed to be here, of course. I know he wants to meet you…”

“I’ve met him,” I said, grandly. “Quite the original.”

Liz laughed. “He’s quite wonderful. He has a wonderful laugh and a warm heart, really.”

I cut in. “Rock Hudson doesn’t like him.”

Liz pooh-poohed the rivalry. “Oh, Rock, he’s wonderful, too. But he’s from another era of acting: study your lines as written, stand on your mark, just follow the director. Rock’s afraid people won’t like him. Jimmy doesn’t care. Jimmy likes to…well…improvise. A script is just a suggestion. Rock can’t do that. And that’s what Jimmy does best.”

“Yet you get along with both of them?”

“Well, yes, of course.” It dawned on me that most people got along with Liz. “In Marfa, Jimmy clung to me. Like he was an orphan. We’re about the same age-what is he? Twenty-four or so? But he looked at me as, like, a mother or an older sister. Can you imagine that? At first disconcerting, but then I realized what he needed from me. Other men woo me, shamelessly, fawningly, promising me anything. I’m used to people flattering me. Jimmy demanded I flatter him. You know, he never made…advances. Ever. Jimmy just wanted a shoulder to cry on.”

Mercy McCambridge had said much the same thing. “Mercy,” I said, baiting, “said he saw her as a mother…”

“The both of us, really. Once he even stumbled, called her ‘Mom’ on the set. Usually it was ‘Madama’ because Jimmy always stays in character. It was so charming. When everyone laughed, he pouted and stormed away. Mercy and I didn’t laugh. Jimmy disappeared for hours.” Liz shook her head. “Jimmy’s a strange boy. Rock’s a strange man. That’s the difference. Boy and man: both rivals for Mom’s affection.”

I wondered if Liz knew of the dangerous letters, but decided not to ask. Mercy would know. Maybe Jimmy (and the studio) shielded Liz from that nonsense.

“Do you know about his Siamese cat?”

“What?”

She smiled. “You know, he was so alone that when we got back here I got him a kitten, which he named Marcus after his nephew in Indiana. Edna, he dotes on that kitten. It’s funny. He’s out speeding around at night, tearing up the hills. You hear about him in the nightclubs with Pier Angeli or with Lydia Plummer or these days Ursula Andress, and then you see him scurrying home to feed Marcus. It’s quite…” she paused, “quaint. Endearing, really.”

Liz was eventually whisked away, waving goodbye, as cameras popped. Then everyone waited, impatient. Mercy brought me coffee, sitting with me and chatting. George Stevens appeared and disappeared, in doorways and out. Hedda Hopper said she had to leave; another engagement called. This was not good news. She was just too