Death and the Bachelor
Image licensed and edited.
Sunday, August 14, 1932
Sitting awake with a half-drunk bottle of champagne and a half-eaten box of chocolates. The champagne a welcome-home gift from Bill Larson, the chocolates purchased by myself (I think Bill could have spared the extra dollar). Dated this entry as Sunday, but I’m wrong. It’s 12:22 a.m. on Monday, and I must drag myself to Bill’s set in seven hours for my first day of work. If I could sleep, I would, but I’m restless from travel. Nothing to do now but scrawl away until the bubbles go to my head.
Glad to be back in L.A. Or am I? I hated New York, that’s true. It’s not like it was in better days—richer days, younger days. Acting (if you can call it that) in The Gay Fiancé was dirtier and dingier than sitting in the audience of Follies of 1926. The leading lady was a drip, the leading man a drunk, the director a sad old fag with twenty pairs of hands. A dreadfully long six weeks of performances. Back to palm trees and sun and my dear home, and back to dawn call times and long nights escorting Mona Vale to the clubs.
I shouldn’t complain. The company’s delightful, the clubs too. But after a time one must wonder what it’s all for. (This is what I get for sitting in silence, not even the radio on. One starts to think! And about what?)
I’m at least relieved Bill found a part for me in his new film, the play having shuttered quicker than its producers had led me to believe. But the script is asinine. It’s Bill’s passion project, I’m sorry to say. His last few did so well that now he has carte blanche, apparently, because this is the story of a man, his fiancé, and Death himself all falling in love with one another.
The title is Death and the Bachelor. Sterling Parker is the leading man, a Manhattan playboy whom Death comes to call on. He makes a bargain: In exchange for his life, he offers Death three days in his luxurious mortal world. Death agrees and poses as a “visiting friend,” but that plan goes to pieces when he falls in love with the bachelor’s fiancé—played by Mona, of course. The man, so nobly, goes with Death in the end to save his fiancé from being taken. “I’m pulling the wool over the studio’s eyes with this one,” Bill told me, “at the end, two men walk off into the sunset.”
But I’m not one of those men, I’m the fiancé’s brother. It’s yet another insignificant pansy part. Well, I’m pansy enough to play one, so says Bill. All my scenes are with Mona, and I’ll be there to comfort her when she realizes she’s stuck in a second-rate part in a second-rate picture. And that, dear diary, is why I’ve been assigned this picture in the first place. (That and Bill’s pity, sick man that he is.)
The moon is in the window and the breeze is floating through the trees. A couple of young lovers just drove by, singing and laughing, lost and happy. Have I come back home only to sit in my chair and get drunk and get myself sick on chocolate, to wax poetic on the moon and drunk young kids careening in the street? My robe’s wearing thin, fraying at the edges, maybe that’s why I’m so tiresome tonight. I simply need to be draped in new fabric. Wish a friend would call with a new trick to share, some blond-haired blue-eyed boy with a dirty mouth who’s just arrived from Iowa. Everyone’s forgotten me but Bill, and he keeps all the good ones for himself.
I’m drunk and sleepy. Can barely hold the pen. Will see tomorrow if I wake up in bed or if I fell asleep in my chair.
Monday, August 15, 1932
First day of shooting. Walked in hungover, bloated, and on time. Spoke very few lines, all of which seemed to be “darling” or “dear.” Bill was a real bitch to me. More energy, more wit, quicker on the pickup, quicker, quicker, Douglas. He’s soft with Mona, lets her do her own makeup and choose her own gowns and dictate the camera angles, which makes it a calmer set than most. Sterling crows about it, though, calls her prissy and prim and unprofessional, so I have to stay close to Mona so they don’t get to arguing.
But that’s all nothing. The boy Bill brought in to play Death—Claude Martin. Never heard of him, nor had anyone else. Dark hair, dark eyes, slender and elegant, an accent from somewhere on the Continent no one can place. Slow to smile, slow to speak. Elusive—you want to take him all in, but he’s always just out of focus, lurking on the periphery. His casting couldn’t be more suitable, even though I find it impossible to imagine him captured on camera.
After he’d slunk back to his dressing room, Mona and I demanded to know where Bill found him. “On the London stage,” he said, “serving tea in the background of a Noël Coward play. Couldn’t keep my eyes off him, and I got the studio to fly him out for a screen test straightaway. Noël was brimming with jealousy, as you can imagine.”
But where’d he come from? Who’s his family? How old is he? It seems silly, but we really were desperate.
“Orphaned as a kid, his parents left him a generous inheritance, he studied and traveled all over Europe, he waltzed into acting on a whim at twenty-two and here he is now eighteen months later. That’s all I know.”
“Bill, you can’t possibly believe that,” Mona said, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s a ready-made biography that could’ve been written by the studio. But Bill didn’t budge. Mona and I think he knows more than he lets on, wants to keep the delicious new find to himself. Already we noticed Bill flirting outside Claude’s dressing room, caressing his shoulder, practically whispering in his ear. Mona’s so happy with Bill, though, that I doubt she’ll push the question further, she finally has a perfect understanding with a director and she wants to keep the peace. I’m not so satisfied. I’d like to get Claude alone sometime.
Tonight, I’m simply alone-alone again. I should never have gone to New York—since I’ve been back the telephone’s forgotten to ring. I tried the radio, but I couldn’t take the screech of trumpets. Resisted finishing off the champagne, but had too many cigarettes. Thinking I’ll need a new chair in addition to a new robe. It’s out of fashion and I’m bored of sitting in it. Silent but for crickets tonight. I salute them for singing. Off to bed.
Saturday, August 20, 1932
Laying on the sofa as I write, bleary-eyed and sluggish, though it’s practically two in the afternoon. Blazing hot outside—window’s open, fan’s blowing, nothing on but an open robe. Had a long, delirious night with Mona, Bill, and, remarkably, Claude.
It was finally time to be Mona’s date last night. She wanted to have a night out and be photographed, and the publicity department was happy to smooth the way. We exited the car arm-in-arm, as usual, Mona looking divine, me looking unobtrusive. Met that New York actress Lillian Graystone, a taciturn but glam redhead, and her own fairy companion for dinner. The studio got their obligatory pictures of us four. We all pretended to have a very gay conversation, I ate to excess—the ladies never can, so I do it for them—and Mona and Lillian disappeared to the powder room between dinner and dessert. I thought the night was over, but Mona was effervescent. “Now we know the night can’t end here, we must pay a visit to Bar Bohème. Lillian’s never seen it.” Lillian cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, expecting some privacy with Mona the rest of the night. But it was not to be. Mona wanted to show her a good time.
Drove from the Derby all the way up to Sunset. The four of us filled the car with cigarette smoke. Mona and Lillian whispered sweet nothings to each other. Lillian’s escort and I couldn’t find anything to talk about. Can’t even remember his name—James? John? He’s a young Southern gent with shifty eyes. Wanted nothing to do with me.
The club was the same as ever. Boisterous, smoky, a mixed crowd. Plenty of whispers when Mona appeared, especially from the fairies decked out in gowns and makeup and wigs. “They adore and emulate me,” Mona said once. The host ushered us to our usual table, the one with a good view of the little stage and where everyone in the club gets a good view of us. Frank, the owner, handed us each toy cymbals, and shouted to the room that we’ll crash them whenever someone new walks in. We’d be the first to know if the cops showed up, in any case. At this point, I was already on my second Sidecar.
Mona, decked out in her mink, was flagrant with Lillian, in a slinky silver number. John-James-Jeff and I smoked, drank, and cracked trés sophisticated jokes which made the ladies toss their heads back with laughter. That’s one of our important functions—not just men in suits to take arm-in-arm, we’re meant to sprinkle a little urbane gaiety on an outing.
A few cocktails in, we crashed our cymbals for a new arrival, and saw that Bill had just entered with Claude. No dates, just the two of them. One might as well show up at a party naked, but Bill somehow gets away with it every time. Mona and I shared a look, both rattled that he was trotting out the boy like this already. Sure, it’s a pansy joint, but one never knows if a gossip columnist or a photographer is lurking. Lillian seemed completely unfazed, though, coming from New York it must seem the most natural thing in the world—I’ve heard she used to sing torch songs in Greenwich Village basement bars for crowds of soused boys.
Mona gave me her nasty little smile, then shouted “Bill! Claude! What a lovely surprise! Come join!” loud enough for the room to hear over the tinny jazz band. The host hurried to set two more chairs at the table, and suddenly Claude was seated to my left.
“I’ve never been here before,” Claude said to me so innocently in his honey-dipped voice. I told him it was nothing to write home about but the drinks were strong. “Colorful crowd here,” he said, I couldn’t tell with admiration or disdain, and I told him well yes, and aren’t we the most colorful of all? The movie people. Mona’s crowd, Bill’s crowd.
He sipped his martini and averted his gaze toward the band playing a Porter song ever-so-slightly off-key. He has such a regal profile. The aquiline slope of his nose, the soft curve of his mouth. “Maybe colorful is the wrong word. Eclectic? Esoteric? Bacchanalian, to be sure.” He nodded at a pair of red-lipped pansies in crisp suits smoking with ostentatious cigarette holders, flanked by a well-developed young man busting out of his shirtsleeves and a middle-aged lady spilling her drink all over her satin gown. “The characters here make us movie people look dull, don’t you think? We’re always working, or thinking about work, or thinking about how the public will think about our work.”
“So you’ve gathered in your sole week in Hollywood. Tell me, Claude, what do you think of your work?” I may have been curt. I bristled at his criticism, his air of dropping into our shanty town from whatever rarefied society he’d come from.
“Well, it’s the busywork that consumes everyone. Getting the right parts, being seen with the right people. All a bit self-important and silly, no? But I like the work in front of the camera. Bill told me on my first day that the camera captures the inner soul, and the actor must be receptive. I have no problem receiving the camera’s attentions. But I wonder what kind of soul it’ll capture. I’m not sure it’ll find any soul at all.”
This startled me, and I couldn’t think of a quick response. I started to say something then stopped, started to take a drink then stopped.
He looked at me with pellucid blue-gray eyes. “Am I too philosophical for Bar Bohème?”
I was about to recover myself and volley back a witty reply, but Mona started shouting at us all to look at the stage. She sloshed her Singapore Sling while she waved her arms toward the stage, and in doing so spilled it in Bill’s lap—she didn’t even notice, and Bill didn’t bother to acknowledge it, but his face only grew sourer.
Then Francie Scotch strutted out, decked out as Mona’s character in The Vixen. Gold sequined gown, tight chestnut curls, crimson lipstick and thick mascara. Francie is, of course, 6’2” and 250 pounds. He went into the number from Mona’s nightclub scene—“I’ve got in-di-viduality”—gyrated, batted his lashes, sat on an older gentleman’s lap. A single spotlight was trained on Mona from the start, and she laughed and applauded and sang along, all loud enough to be heard over Francie. The show was amusing, Mona was not. She even stood and took a bow at the end.
When the performance concluded, I noticed Claude had left his seat and was nowhere to be found. I hadn’t heard or seen him leave. No one else had seemed to notice, either; Bill, Lillian, and Jim-John-whoever were all listening to Mona proclaim how marvelous Francie was. With no eyes on me, I stole away to the restroom.
I found Claude leaning against the sink and smoking a cigarette. He turned and said hello, and the smoke tendrils billowed and caressed my face.
I was relieved to find him. Though I barely knew him, his seemed the only company I could tolerate tonight. “I’d wondered whether you’d disappeared into the night, or simply evaporated at your seat, soulless man that you are. No fan of Francie’s?” I said.
“I’ve never seen Francie before tonight. Quite a performer, an original. I certainly could be a fan. Only I’m not used to all this vivacity and needed a rest.”
“Was there no vivacity where you came from? I thought Bill plucked you off the London stage. I assumed you came from high society.”
“It’s true I was on the stage, and I was in London. I never knew much society until recently, though. I’m more acclimated to a quiet life. Not long ago my existence was quite dour, quite dim. I’ve been trying to soak in all the stimulation I can, but a man does need a minute to catch his breath.” He stared down at his shoes and exhaled smoke onto the dirty tile. “Douglas,” he said, “is the world always an exciting place to be, or does one grow too tired?”
There was a strange distance in his voice I couldn’t figure out, like he was talking to me from inside a subterranean cave. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I hazarded a response. “Of course you’ll get tired of Hollywood. The way you talk, you’re there already.” His face shot up, and he looked at me with a weary half-smile and eyes on the brink of overflowing. He now seemed so vulnerable, this new arrival who’s only just learning he’s been tossed into the meat grinder. I placed my hand on his shoulder. “The town is rotten, but Claude, everyone who knows this can figure a way around it. You can still make a life here. Men like us might not find anywhere better.”
He lowered his face to my hand resting on his shoulder and brushed it with his cheek, as if he were a cat. His skin was smooth and unaccountably cool. Before I comprehended what he was doing, he lifted my hand off his shoulder and brought it to his lips. He kissed the center of my palm, then the webbing between my thumb and index finger. He placed the tip of my finger in his mouth, traced it down his chin, and released my hand. Finally he placed a hand on the back of my head and drew my mouth to his.
His kiss was mist off a waterfall. I was absorbed into his open mouth, the soft portal into his dark center. The pleasure trickled through my veins and liquefied me from the inside. I stopped breathing.
He pulled away, and I felt that I had been pressed through a sieve and left on the floor in pieces. An indigo glow emanated from the surfaces of the washroom—phosphorescence from the grime stuck in the walls, the edges of the cracked mirror. My knees were shaking. Claude inhaled from his cigarette and puffed out three perfect rings. I watched them travel toward me, slowly losing their form and dissipating into the close air.
Then Bill pushed open the door and broke the spell. The din of muddled jazz and sozzled conversation burst in. I became aware of my own odd position, standing shakily under a flickering lightbulb. Bill looked me up and down, with that knotted brow of his, and asked whether I had taken something.
Before I could defend myself, he spotted Claude and took his arm. “Claude, dear,” he said, “where’d you disappear to? We’ve missed your company.”
“I only had to relieve myself. What a marvelous night it’s been. I hate to tear myself away, but I need my rest. Can we go home?”
“Yes, you’re wiser than me. Go fetch our coats and I’ll be with you in a minute. I need to speak with Douglas here.”
Claude gave me a conspiratorial wink, apparently unseen by Bill, and disappeared out the door. Bill sighed and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief as soon as he was gone. He told me to lay off the cocaine, he told me Mona needed me with her, he told me I shouldn’t spend my nights chasing boys that aren’t interested.
I said I hadn’t taken any cocaine, Mona could very well entertain herself, and I hadn’t been chasing anyone. Usually I like seeing Bill this upset over a boy—it does him good for someone else to exercise power over him—but Claude had so thoroughly unsettled my equilibrium that I wanted Bill to leave immediately. “Bill,” I said, trying to regain command of my quivering voice, “go home and get some rest. Don’t leave him waiting.”
He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Don’t be late on Monday,” he grumbled, and then trudged out of the room.
The rest of the night was immaterial. I humored Mona, got a touch too drunk, sat nauseated in the car ride home, stumbled into bed. All the while Claude’s kiss floated in my mind. Even in the light of day I feel it melting my poor calcified soul. I’ll see him at work every day under Bill’s watchful eye these next few weeks, but I need to get him alone again. I spent only a few minutes with him, yet something feels missing from me now that we’re apart.
Nothing should feel this unusual, though, should it? I’ve had affairs with coworkers, competed with Bill, been seduced by strange men who dropped into town from out of nowhere and disappeared just as quick. Only there’s a strange presence about Claude. Like a ghost who’s materialized into solid matter, or a living dream.
I’m afraid I’m slipping back into sleep, my hangover’s lingering and I can’t keep myself upright in this heat. So I’ll put down my pen, and I’ll dream.
Monday, August 22, 1932
Here I am, back in my chair, smoking cigarettes and downing champagne, alone and tipsy and incorrigibly reflective in the middle of the night. The champagne’s for consolation, not celebration. By now, it’s lost its bubbles. I came home tonight and looked at my chair and thought, my God, I really do need a new chair. The gold stitching is fraying, there’s a stain from a spilled drink on the right arm, and the floral brocade is, sadly, tacky. If I had more guests, someone would have alerted me to its sorry state by now.
My state’s as sorry as the chair’s. I came to work with such optimism today. I was plotting to get a minute alone with Claude and, besides that, I was ready to shoot my only significant scene today, the only one where I’m not standing in a crowd making quips and eating canapés. The scene where I attempt to convince Mona’s character that there’s something funny about her fiancé’s visitor, and that she should stay away, but by the end I’m her shoulder to cry on when she confesses she loves the mysterious guest. It isn’t Hamlet, but it’s the most dialogue I’ve had in a picture since I was Kay Francis’s cuckolded fiancé in Gals About Town, which must have been eighteen months ago now.
I arrived on set early. The usual routine: I dressed, had my pancake makeup slathered on, and told Mona she looked wonderful. We were finishing the New Year’s Eve cocktail party scene first, which we’d started last Thursday and I suspect had been aggravating Bill’s ulcer. Plenty of random contract players and extras in this scene to arrange, and every time he tried to shoot, someone was standing in the wrong place. According to Bill, though, there were only a few takes left, and we’d stay on schedule if we finished the scene this morning.
The mood on set was light, confident we’d wrap the scene within a couple hours, and I was the life of the party. I flattered the young actresses who had their first lines in a picture, cracked jokes about the plywood walls and champagne flutes filled with apple juice to the veteran players, acted feminine in Sterling’s presence to make him feel more masculine, affirmed to Mona that her makeup would indeed accentuate her cheekbones in the way she liked. When it came time to shoot, I stood in the right place and said my lines correctly and audibly. All was moving at a satisfactory clip.
The final shot had me standing next to Claude, and as Bill was arranging the actors, I took my chance. Despite being under hot lights in thick makeup, he was so poised I grew nervous and tripped over my words. “Well,” I said, “the other night. I’ve been thinking about it. Have you?” Horrible!
A mischievous smile slanted across his face. “How funny to discuss a moment of pleasure days after it happened, and in the workplace too. Bill would call you flagrant.”
“Bill, call me flagrant?” I said, “he’s the most flagrant of us all.”
“You know well that Bill can afford to be flagrant more than you. Look at how everyone in this room bows to his demands. He’s respected, he has authority.”
I wouldn’t call Claude’s demeanor hostile, but it felt like he was trying to throw me off. “Am I not respected? Do I have no authority?”
He looked quizzical at this. “You’re well liked, a divine person to have by one’s side. But I’m sure you realize your position is different from Bill’s.”
I was baffled at the turn the conversation had taken so quickly. I had wanted to flirt, and here Claude was analyzing my “position.” I wanted to hit him back. “And what’s your position, Claude? Here on Bill’s request, on Bill’s dime, in Bill’s guest suite? I would call it precarious.”
Now he seemed downright confused. “I wasn’t trying to argue, Douglas, let’s drop it,” he said, and turned his face away.
It aggravated me that he let it go so quickly, that he could toss away the conversation and stare straight ahead. I didn’t want to argue either, but I wanted his attention. I snapped at him—“Drop what?”—and in doing so, jerked toward him and spilled my drink on his suit. There was a small commotion and Bill came over to assess the damage. He shouted at me that I was careless and had no sense, and then sent us all off on our lunch break while they hurried Claude to the costume department to wash out the stain.
I was chastened. Took lunch alone in the commissary, returned to set somber and serious. Bill got the last shot, then we set for my scene with Mona. The scene was in her character’s boudoir. I was arranged to stand over her while she stared into a vanity. She beckoned me down to her level and whispered: “You’ve done nothing wrong, but Bill’s in a temper and liable to take it out on you. Be easy and amenable, which you know how to do better than anyone. And keep your distance from Claude until the picture’s done. Bill’s getting jealous, and jealousy makes him so erratic he can barely work. It’s all a pain, darling, I know.” She looked up at me with her mascara-lined lashes and rouged cheeks with a soft, pitying smile.
Duly warned, I complied with Bill’s direction and acted with whatever conviction I could muster. Stay away from him, he’s no good, etc. etc. Claude rumbled through my mind all this time—his inscrutable demeanor and Bill’s covetousness created what seemed to be an insurmountable wall between the two of us in just an hour, yet this only made my desire for him pound harder in my chest. I tried my best to clamp it down. I didn’t want Bill to read my thoughts.
The scene was simple, a single medium shot that kept us both in the frame for its duration, so I expected it would be over quickly. Then Bill surprised me by requesting a closeup for my final lines: “Be gentle with your heart and soul, Lucy. Don’t give them away to a man you don’t know and can’t trust, fascinating as he may be. He could drag you down a dark road.” Apparently the “feeling” of this overheated dialogue couldn’t be conveyed in a medium shot. The audience would need to see my pores to understand.
Bill had never shot me in closeup, and in fact I’ve rarely had to act in closeup for any director. Suddenly there was a pressure to perform. Even if only for fifteen seconds, the film would be resting on my shoulders. The knot in my stomach tightened and I felt sweat start to form along my hairline.
I tried. Then he asked me to start again, and to move my face less. Apparently I was too “theatrical.” I tried again. Then he asked the same. This repeated for twenty minutes, and I was so nervous my hands began to shake. I couldn’t believe how much film he was wasting on me.
He walked straight onto the set and grabbed me by the shoulder. “Douglas,” he said in a stern whisper loud enough to be heard by the entire crew, “you’d goddamn better relax. You don’t have to do anything. In closeup, the camera picks up everything you’re thinking. You don’t need to frown or raise your eyebrows. It’s contrived bullshit and it makes you look ridiculous. Competent actors know this. We’ll do one more, and if you can’t get it right, I’m scrapping the line.”
I caught Mona’s eye in the vanity mirror after this tirade, and I must have looked like I was about to explode, because she gave her head a decisive shake and mouthed “no.” She was right. I wouldn’t try to argue. I made my face a perfect mask and he printed the take.
I don’t know how much longer I can stand acting. The studio barely finds roles for me anymore, and if Bill thinks competence means transparency, then I have no desire to learn how to act competently.
Claude must be awake in his bed now, holed up in Bill’s guest suite. Bill could be sharing it with him, or he could retreat to his own bed each night after paying Claude a visit. I can’t imagine Claude even likes Bill, though, he only likes leaching off him. I’m bitter, bitter, bitter.
I mustn’t write in here anymore; I feel worse having rehashed the day’s humiliations. And if it were to be found? Doubtful, but it’d ruin me. I’ll burn these pages before long.
Wednesday, August 31, 1932
Did I write that I’d “burn these pages” in my last entry? I have no recollection of scrawling those words, but there they are on the page. They were written drunk, I can tell, because of my warped handwriting. Too much champagne and I become more melodramatic than Mona’s characters.
Today was, thank God, my final day of shooting. Mona, Claude, and Sterling still have a few more scenes, but I put in my last take this afternoon. My only line: “Now, Lucy, really!” The costume department decided I had to wear a polka-dotted ascot for this scene, in which I’ll surely be out of focus. Another picture I’m glad to be done with.
After last Monday’s humiliations, I resolved to behave with peak professionalism the rest of the shoot, and days of unexpectedly smooth sailing followed. I kept my distance from Claude and treaded carefully with Bill. The shoot settled again and moved so quickly that the film is now on schedule to finish early. Since Bill demanded I stop moving my face, I’ve ceased attempting to act and have instead fantasized about redecorating my living room. He’s printed every take.
Yet I started to worry all was not as calm as it seemed. Other than to tell me where to stand, Bill had not said a word to me since his tirade. He hadn’t criticized my performance again, but my role is essentially extraneous, and he could have decided I’m no longer worth hiring after this picture. Bill gives me half of my parts, so if he cuts me loose, then surely the studio will let my contract lapse. I’d fail miserably as a freelancer, and with my pitiful education, I’d have to get awfully creative to pay my mortgage. I realized I needed to know, definitively, where I stood with Bill.
So I gave Bill a call Friday night after the week’s work was done, hoping to clear the air but steeled for him to curse me out. I apologized for holding up production and promised I’d keep away from Claude. There was a horrible pause, but then came a shock—Bill apologized. He told me he hadn’t been fair to me since I’d been back in town. Claude had sucked him in so completely, he said, that he felt ready to pounce at anyone who he thought posed a threat. I didn’t find myself so threatening, but he told me Claude had spent the ride home from Bar Bohème praising my wit, my verve, my “ease amidst life’s ecstatic turbulence.” (“His words, not mine,” I remember Bill saying, “he talks like no one I’ve ever met.”) Claude even told Bill of our kiss and informed him I had a “delicious mouth.”
“And he said it with no malice. He had no desire to make me jealous. He acted as if nothing could have been more wholesome. I could’ve strangled him, I could’ve strangled you, but he’s too odd and too direct to stay mad at, and you and I have been friends too long. Anyway, I stopped sleeping with him last night. A brief affair, but it feels like it’s taken up half my life. He’s so absorbing. Those eyes, you know. I had to tear myself away before I was in too deep.”
Never in my life have I heard Bill talk this way, so moony and delirious. Yet I could understand—every time I catch Claude’s eye, even if we’re on opposite sides of the room, I’m slammed with an overwhelming sensation somewhere between arousal and vertigo. Not only have I avoided speaking to him lately, I’ve even avoided looking at him to stay focused and to conceal how besotted I am. It’s as if Claude cast a spell to make men crazy. And when I heard what Claude said to Bill about me, even if Claude was just toying with him, some feral part of me wanted to speed to Bill’s house, break into Claude’s bedroom through the window, and take that frighteningly beautiful man in my arms.
After our call, Bill started acting so friendly that I’ve wondered if his demeanor is a put-on. His ingratiation reached a new peak today when he offered to show me the dailies of the film’s final scene, which he already shot with Sterling and Claude. Sterling linked his arm with Claude’s, then Claude walked him off into a painted sunset. The man who loves life finally accepts death. Sterling had grumbled that the ending was too queer, but good employee that he is, he went through with it. Bill caught a beautiful closeup of Claude before the two of them walked off. You could see his soul pouring forth from his eyes.
I walked out of the screening room and I saw Claude sitting, alone, in the back row. I’d had no idea he was there. He asked me, so casually, “So? What did you think? Can I act?”
My mind sputtered. I hadn’t spoken to him alone in days now. “Yes, it’s a, uh, a lovely performance,” I said, stammering as if I were a schoolboy again.
“How nice to be thought of as lovely. That’s a review I’d frame and hang on my wall.” He sighed and lit the cigarette that had been dangling between his fingers. “I’ll miss you dearly on set these final few days. I don’t know how we’ll manage.”
I was unnerved that he spoke to me like this so close to Bill—even if he truly didn’t want Claude anymore, there was still no chance he wanted to overhear us flirting. He could decide with no warning that he wants Claude back, and I refuse to be accused of trying to steal Claude out from under him. I tried to hold myself together, but I couldn’t help what must have been a deep blush. “I think you’ll manage alright. Everyone here’s a professional, allegedly.”
We both laughed, and I made a move to end the conversation. “Pleasure to work with you, Claude,” I said, and I put out my hand. He shook it firmly and held on for an extra moment. His hand is the softest I’ve ever felt on a man. Bill cleared his throat conspicuously from the front row, and I made a quick exit.
It would be much easier to forget Claude if he had allowed me to, but alas, it seems he wants to string me along. No matter. After Bill’s wrap party, I won’t see him again.
To refocus my mind after such a topsy-turvy few weeks, and to occupy myself until the studio finds me a new part, I decided I really will redecorate my living room. It’s time to replace the garish furniture I bought with my first flush of cash in ’25, especially that chair I’ve grown to hate. Here’s my dream: A white sofa and two matching armchairs, all low to the ground. A lacquered walnut coffee table on a jade green rug. Two walnut side tables and two lamps with gilded jade bases. A sunburst mirror on the wall opposite the couch.
Darling Eddie from properties already found me two lamps of exactly the sort I’d envisioned. They have perfectly smooth, cloud-rippled jade bases, separated into four sections by gilded brass. He also told me where to order a silk kimono to match, and I’m anxiously awaiting its delivery.
Do I wish Claude were sitting with me, admiring the new lamps and listening to me plot my remodel? Of course, but I’ll manage on my own.
Sunday, September 4, 1932
Just woke to the afternoon sun cresting across the sky and into my eyes. It was a late night, and I’m surprised I slept at all. Yet here I am, watching the daylight dapple shadows across the wallpaper and jotting down my remembrances.
Last night was Bill’s wrap party. The same party he throws at his house after every picture. The whitewashed walls, the domed windows, the velvet-lined sofas, the palms out front and the magnolia in the backyard, the electric blue pool. Dozens of guests. Each time I walk into the foyer I’m presented with a tray of champagne cocktails, then I make my rounds. By the fourth cocktail, I find myself at the pool. It’s a carefully plotted, seamlessly executed event, and I comfortably followed the track that had been laid for me.
I arrived at 10:00 and settled in my usual spot by 11:00: the lounge chair facing the deep end. I’ve always been the first to claim my spot by the pool; it allows me to assert myself as part of Bill’s inner circle without having to grovel for his attention. Indeed, I spoke to him for precisely thirty seconds in the crowded dining room before he continued a lively conversation with Gloria Swanson and Constance Bennett. These parties are for the cast and crew in name only. Stars who have nothing to do with the picture always occupy the host’s attention, while set dressers and bit players cluster together and engorge themselves on shellfish and caviar.
Mona, as usual, joined me after batting her eyelashes at the producers on the guest list, and Lillian followed a few minutes later. We held court for the revelers who made their way outside, and staff came by periodically with new trays of cocktails. After a couple hours we were all appropriately sloshed. Empty glasses were arrayed on the ground; the water was luminescent. Mona and Lillian danced woozily to the muffled sounds of the jazz band playing inside. Bill’s new houseboy, who had been silent in swim trunks all night, sat on the diving board and smoked cigarette after cigarette as he waited for his benefactor to fetch him.
“Douglaaaas,” Mona slurred, her head bobbing on Lillian’s shoulder, “isn’t it strange that none of us have seen Claude all night? Naughty boy, skipping the party.” She was right; Claude was absent. My stomach had churned at the thought of seeing him when I arrived, yet as each hour passed without Claude appearing, I grew disappointed. Did he want to avoid me? Had I been too cold to him, brushed him off too carelessly? Now that I thought of it, I wasn’t confident he still lived there. Maybe the houseboy had taken over his suite, and Claude had already flown back to Europe.
Then a hand brushed my shoulder. I jerked around and saw him, unmistakable. Water-filtered waves of light undulated across his face.
I can’t claim to recall what I said to him, dazed as I was. But it may have been brusque. Something garbled about his belated presence.
He told me he wanted to speak with me, but that he would wait until I had the presence of mind to do so. He sat on the edge of the chair and stared into the pool. I watched the back of his head and, at some point, fell asleep.
When I woke he was still there. The poolside was otherwise deserted and the band had stopped playing. It was still dark, and there were lingering murmurs of conversation inside, but the party was flickering out. I asked Claude whether he’d been there the whole time, and he affirmed he had been. He smiled with what looked like genuine affection and warmth. “Douglas, I’ve been meaning to talk with you. Bring you to my suite? Bill won’t disturb us, he hasn’t stepped foot in there in weeks.”
I got up and took a few steps to test my sobriety, and I was halfway-steady on my feet. Sober enough to string a sentence together without saying something regrettable. “No,” I told him, “you can tell me whatever you have to say here. If it’s privacy you want, no one will hear us.” I felt Claude was playing too coy. I wanted him direct.
“Alright,” he said. “I like your company, and I want more. I want you. I know you know this, and I know you feel the same. We had that night in the bar, and I’ve kept an eye on you since then—you try too hard to look away, and you want to speak with me but daren’t. I understand why you’ve kept your distance, but there’s no need to worry about Bill. I like him, but we’ve run our course. What do you say? Can we make a go of it?”
It baffled me how clearly Claude read my mind, and how lightly he dispensed with my anxieties. This was a man I’d known for less than a month, whose murky life I knew nothing about, who was still living with a friend who had the power to hire or fire me, and here he was, practically proposing marriage.
I tried my best to hesitate. “You say Bill doesn’t care. Sure. But what if you’re wrong? And let’s say you move in with me and he cuts me out. I’m only hanging on in this industry because he makes sure the studio throws me the occasional bit part. Claude, we barely know each other. Why take such risks?”
“Don’t grant him more power than he has. He’s not so malicious as you convince yourself he is, and even if you did lose your career, you’d find a way forward. You’ve made it this far, haven’t you? Why would you want to live without risk?”
There was only so much I could do to deny Claude. He magnetized me, and nothing weakened the pull. Every rational thought, every logical justification I had spent weeks fortifying—all collapsed like a house of cards when I looked in his eyes.
I knelt on the concrete, wrapped my arms around him, and kissed him. “Come home with me,” I whispered in his ear. We snuck through the thinning crowd in the house, all drunk and muttering confidences and nodding off, and we flew home.
We arrived at my house and stripped in the dark of my bedroom. I ran my hands over every inch of him. We clutched and grasped. I hungered, and I felt his hunger merge with mine. We absorbed one another. The room emitted an ethereal glow. We wrapped ourselves up in each other and drifted to sleep without a word.
I remember now that, as I drove Claude to my home and he smoked out the window, he told me one thing about himself. “I can’t tell you much about where I come from, and it doesn’t matter now anyway. But I left unfinished business, and I may be called back someday. If the day comes when I must return, it’ll be difficult to come back.” He paused, exhaled. “But I’m here now.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask him to. I inwardly accepted what he said. Every love affair risks a sudden departure.
Claude is rustling beside me and will soon be awake. I won’t expound on anything more, though I could. When I finish this entry, I won’t burn the book. Maybe I’ll stow it in a drawer. What is even left to say? Only that I feel a future beckoning, materializing between us. I no longer feel compelled to continue in the way I have. The pictures and parties have run their course. As much as I’ve told myself otherwise, I can find a new way to make a living. Something I can do with Claude at my side without interference. I’m overtaken by the need to shape a new life.
D. Anderson
____
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, August 29, 1982
DOUGLAS ANDERSON, FORMER ACTOR AND INTERIOR DECORATOR TO THE STARS, DEAD AT 86
Douglas Anderson, a supporting player in films of the 20s and 30s who became a prominent interior decorator, died last Sunday, August 22 at home in Los Angeles. He was 86 years old.
Anderson was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and began his career on the stage in the early 1920s, appearing in touring and repertory theatrical productions. His first appearance onscreen was in the 1925 silent melodrama Her Marriage. He went on to play roles in numerous films over the next several years from directors including W.S. Van Dyke, Gregory La Cava, and William Larson, his final screen credit being Larson’s Death and the Bachelor in 1933. He made his sole appearance on Broadway in The Gay Fiancé in 1932.
In 1933, Anderson opened an interior decoration business, alongside his business partner and onetime co-star Claude Martin. Anderson and Martin quickly became in-demand decorators among his former colleagues in Hollywood, and counted as clients Joan Crawford, Mona Vale, and William Powell.
Martin went missing in 1968, a still-unsolved episode which rattled Hollywood’s old guard and baffled police. The investigation uncovered that no records for Claude Martin existed prior to 1931, and no relatives could be located, leading many to assume Martin was an illegal alien who made a hasty return to his country of origin. Anderson long rejected this theory, noting Martin left all his belongings behind.
Anderson abruptly shuttered his business after Martin’s disappearance. In retirement, he lived quietly in his Brentwood home.
Anderson was a lifelong bachelor and has no living family.
Robert Stinner is a writer of fiction, essays, and criticism. His short fiction has appeared in The Muleskinner Journal, and his critical essays on film, books, and television have appeared in Bright Wall/Dark Room, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and The Rumpus, among others. He lives in Washington, D.C. Read more at robertstinner.com.