Lamarr, Jimmy Stewart and Rosalind Russell sitting at the table next to you, in the hotel’s main dining room or its Polo Lounge.
Back in the late ’30s, when I met Peggy Hogan, she’d been studying at Sawyer Secretarial College, earning money on the side as an artist’s model, posing for Brown and Bigelow’s Chicago-based calendar artists. The business schooling was at her family’s insistence, as her ambition had been to become an actress. She had lived in Tower Town-at that time, the Chicago equivalent of Greenwich Village-and had some minor success in the Little Theater scene.
By the time she and I got together, though, Peggy had abandoned her show business aspirations and used her considerable business skills-she was particularly adept at accounting-to help support her family, after her father’s second and fatal stroke. She was one of seven kids, and her only brother, Johnny, had been killed in the war.
That burden was off her back now, however, because her uncle James Ragen-a client of mine-had died last August and left Peggy’s mother a tidy sum. Jim Ragen had been the head of Continental Press, a racing wire service used by bookies nationwide, and he had died-despite my best efforts to prevent it-at the hands of “rival business interests.”
Close to her uncle and looking up to him, Peggy had been around that kind of people all her life-underworld figures, I mean (she even at one time dated a Capone bodyguard)-and had an unfortunate propensity toward fancying the “glamorous” world of bigtime gangsters.
I guess my reputation for having mob ties myself-really exaggerated-maybe lent me a little of that same shady allure, from Peggy’s point of view. So maybe I shouldn’t have complained about her yen for the likes of her late uncle, and Capone bodyguards, and did I mention the friend of mine she’d run off to Las Vegas with was Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel?
All of which is to say, Peggy had been around, yet at the same time was naive about certain things. She could be impressed by the phony glitz of Ben Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel, the aura of excitement, danger and affluence that emanated from bigtime gamblers and gangsters, surrounded as they were by fawning sycophants and beautiful women in jewels and fur.
And of course, by his own crafty design, Ben Siegel’s Las Vegas was the bastard brother to Tinsel Town; so I suppose it should have been no surprise to me that honeymooning in Hollywood would stir certain dormant leanings and longings within my bride.
Not right away, though. The first week of our honeymoon in the Southland (as Southern California liked to call itself) had been blissfully uneventful-really your typical honeymoon, three parts sightseeing, one part fucking. Maybe two parts fucking.
On a delightfully sunny day, we prowled the foot trails of Elysian Park, up and down arroyo-gouged hills, through a snarl of creepers, wild roses, blue gum eucalyptus, slouching pepper trees and twisted oaks; from Point Grand View, the city and mountains lay stretched before us, as if the world was ours for the taking. The view at night at Griffith Park planetarium (within and without) widened those possibilities to the universe, though the next morning we settled for a rowboat ride on the shady, landscaped waters of Westlake Park, ogled the oozing bubbling bog of the La Brea Tar Pits in the afternoon and, that night, took in the colored lanterns and the festive music from cafes of brick-paved, shop-strewn Olvera Street.
But the sights that most thrilled Peggy were the movie palaces of Hollywood Boulevard, the ridiculous pagoda of Grauman’s Chinese-where we compared footprints with the stars (my feet were bigger than Gable’s, hers smaller than Lombard’s) and took in Till the Clouds Roll By — and the Egyptian, where we caught The Shocking Miss Pilgrim and coerced a passerby to snap our picture in front of the ancient god standing guard in the forecourt.
To me the perfect symbol of this phony burg was that shabby HOLLYWOODLAND sign on Mount Lee, a deteriorating remnant of a failed real estate deal, letters thirty feet wide and fifty feet tall studded with burned-out lightbulbs, a decaying relic whose chief function over the years had been to provide a platform for the suicide dives of failed starlets. Still, the looming letters from a distance, if you squinted, looked impressive. They certainly impressed Peggy, who was cross with me when I suggested that maybe someday somebody would have the good sense to tear the goddamn thing down.
“You have no romance,” Peggy said.
We had just made love on the bungalow’s Axminster broadloom carpet in the glow of the marble fireplace.
Nuzzling her neck, I said, “If that’s what you think, you haven’t been paying attention.”
“That’s not what I mean… Can we talk?”
I had not been married long enough to recognize the three deadliest words in the English language, known by husbands everywhere.
“Aren’t we?” I asked innocently. “Talking?”
Now she nuzzled my neck. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
“Ask me something?” I ran a hand along the smooth side of her, following the sensuous sweep down to her waist and up the swell of her swell hip. “Sure. Ask me anything.”
“Could we stay longer?”
“Where? California? Why?”
The violet eyes were wide and seemingly guileless. “Never mind why. Could we?”
I leaned on an elbow, watching the flames of the fireplace lick her, burnishing her supple curves. “Well, not at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I think we can squeeze a month, maybe a month and a half out of ’em. You got any idea what these bungalows go for, a night?”
“I know that. I just thought maybe we could rent a little place.”
“… You don’t mean you’d like me to work out of the L.A. office? Peggy, you can’t be serious…”
She was studying me, affectionately, a hand fiddling with my hair. “Why don’t we throw something on and go to the lounge?”
Polo Lounge, she meant.
Soon we were sharing one of the private booths overlooking the garden patio, the trees of which were festooned with twinkling lights. This was a week night, around eleven, and the place wasn’t all that busy. The only celebrity couple was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who-like us-were married and seemed deeply, hopelessly in love.
Peggy-in a pink pantsuit with shoulder pads that would have done Joan Crawford proud-sipped her stinger, cherry-lipsticked lips kissing the red plastic straw, and I worked on my rum cooler, wondering what was on her mind.
Finally, she said, “Being out here has got me thinking.”
“About?”
“Giving it another try.”
“Giving what another try?”
“Acting!”
The word was like a blow to the pit of my stomach, and I probably sounded winded, echoing, “Acting?”
“You knew that was always my dream.”
“I thought we’d kinda thrown in together on a mutual dream, Peg-the white-cottage-white-picket-fence variety?”
“Nate, you don’t expect me to be just another drab little housewife, do you?”
Now I felt a black cloud settling over my head, like that shrimpy guy in L’il Abner, the one trouble followed.
Trying to be gentle, I said, “Baby, don’t be fooled by this mink-lined hellhole.”
The violet eyes glittered, looking as lovely-and as hard-as precious gems. “I know it’s a tough town. I know sooner or later I have to check out of the Beverly Hills Hotel and back into reality. But I have talent, Nate-you remember how good I was, in Winterset, at the Playhouse? Don’t you see? This could be my last chance to make something of myself.”
And here I thought she’d made something of herself becoming Mrs. Nathan Heller.
“Baby,” I said, “thousands of pretty young things flock out here to knock Lana Turner off the screen, and the only roles they get, on or off the screen, are as waitresses, salesgirls, and car hops.”
Her eyes tightened. “Are you saying I’m too old?”
