“What was it that Lord Beaverbrook said about haggling over the price?” Margaret asked. Charlie knew the answer but didn’t respond.
Several martinis later, Margaret was deep in conversation with Janet Leigh at a two-top. It was that time of the night—or, technically, the morning—when parties take on lives of their own and libations explain almost any detour.
Their conversation had started innocently enough with Margaret reintroducing herself to Leigh at the sinks in the ladies’ room.
“It’s probably a cliché at this point for someone to tell you she hasn’t taken a shower without fear since seeing Psycho,” Margaret said as she reapplied her lipstick in the mirror to a knowing chuckle from Leigh, “but I have to wonder if it was traumatic for you too.”
“Are you kidding? I almost stopped taking showers,” Leigh said, dabbing her nose with a powder puff. “And I’m always facing the door, watching, no matter where the showerhead is.”
Margaret laughed. “You have no idea how much better that makes me feel.”
Leigh reached over and gently caressed Margaret’s cheek as a sister might. The two closed their purses, wandered to the bar, then found a table, drinks in hand. The shower scene, Leigh confided, was the most difficult shoot of her life; though it lasted just forty-five seconds in the movie, it was composed of fifty-two cuts requiring seventy-eight camera setups. It took more than seven days to film, Leigh said. The shower water was ice cold, the blood was Hershey’s chocolate sauce, the sound effects came from a knife plunging into a casaba melon, and a body double was used for every shot in which the audience didn’t see her face.
“Marli Renfro was her name,” Leigh said. “A stripper from Dallas. One of the first Playboy cover girls! She’s shooting some dreck right now, a soft-core comedy, the only gig she could get.” She tsked knowingly and took a sip of her cosmopolitan.
“Well, at least she’s safe from these octopuses,” Margaret said. “Octopi,” she corrected herself.
Leigh laughed. “They’re a handsy bunch, aren’t they,” she said. “As soon as they found out Tony was leaving me for that teenager, every one of them stepped right on up for a piece.”
It hadn’t hit the papers yet, but Leigh’s husband, actor Tony Curtis, had filed for divorce and was leaving her for Christine Kaufmann, his seventeen-year-old costar in the film Taras Bulba.
“Frank was first in line, of course,” Leigh continued. “Tony had me served right before we shot the train scene on Manchurian and the attempts to ‘console’ me began shortly thereafter.” She smiled modestly. “But I’ve heard far too many horror stories.”
“What do you mean?”
Leigh looked around the room. Charlie and Lawford were deep in conversation, as were Giancana and Judy, but most of the remaining crowd was gathered around the main table where Sinatra, Frankenheimer, and others regaled the guests with uproarious tales.
“Don’t get me wrong, Frank is a real charmer,” Leigh said. “He’s just also kind of, well, unstable.”
“He has moods,” Margaret agreed.
“Sammy even gave those dark moods a nickname—‘Stormy Weather.’” Leigh chuckled. “But I’m talking about real problems. He tried to kill himself a couple times after breakups with Ava. And I don’t mean like threatening to do it or taking two extra aspirin or any of that bullshit Hollywood drama. I mean gun in hand, Ava trying to wrestle it away, bullet goes through the door. Scary stuff.”
Leigh reached into her purse and withdrew a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter. She offered a smoke to Margaret, who accepted, feeling wild.
“I don’t know much about…celebrities’ personal lives,” Margaret said not particularly truthfully, searching for a more respectful term than gossip.
“You don’t?” Leigh asked. “Well, I wish more people were like you. It’s bad enough Tony’s shtupping a teenager, but soon enough the whole world’s going to find out.” She downed her cosmo and motioned for another. “Worst thing is, Charlotte Goode tried to warn me and I dismissed her.”
“You know Charlotte?” Margaret asked.
“Everyone knows Charlotte—and she knows everything,” Leigh said. “Thank God she prints only a fraction of it.”
“Really?” Margaret asked. “Why does she hold back?”
“I don’t know,” Leigh said. “She’s barely touched anything relating to Frank. She wrote about how horrible Ava was to him, though—just awful. Really cruel. But she didn’t print anything about the abortions Ava got that broke Frank’s heart. Or his suicide attempts.”
“How do you know Charlotte even knew about them?” Margaret asked.
“Sweetie, Charlotte told me herself,” Leigh said. She sighed and looked at the main table. “And now Frank is getting his revenge on our whole gender. Poor Juliet better watch out or she’ll end up just like Betty.”
Margaret knew “Betty” was the actress Lauren Bacall, the widow of Sinatra’s idol Humphrey Bogart. But that was where her understanding ended.
Someone in the dining room turned up the volume of the background music, blasting Joey Dee and the Starliters singing “Peppermint Twist”: In a night like this, a peppermint twist. Round and round, up and down…
“I’m afraid I don’t know what Frank did to Betty,” Margaret said.
Leigh looked around to make sure no one was listening. “Frank idolized Bogie, you know. Worshipped him. Him and Bogie and Bacall and Judy Garland—they were the original Rat Pack, the real Rat Pack. This is all just nonsense.” Her expression turned sour and she waved her hand toward the main table and then around the room, as if everything at Toots Shor’s that night was a joke.
“So Bogie got cancer and died in…when was it?” Leigh continued. “In ’57, I think. And then Frank started dating Betty. It got serious—quick. He proposed. But he wanted it to be a secret. Bogie had died only like a year before. One day she went out to see a picture with Swifty—Lazar, you know, the agent—and a reporter was there and asked about the engagement and she told the truth. She admitted it. I mean, why not, right? So it was going to
