Table 3 - Where the swells sit - Chapter 3

“How are you going to get there?” Mutti asked.
“I thought I’d rent something grand, bold perhaps.” I widened my eyes and grinned.
Death Valley did not spell fun to most sixteen-year-olds for especially not in 1933. But then I was always on the cutting edge. It seemed romantic and larger than life to a city girl like me - a wide carved rough land of saltwater flats and alien moon landscapes. Death Valley had just been designated a National Monument in April. This meant in just a few months President Roosevelt was going to send in his newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps to build 343 miles of new roads as part of his New Deal works projects – but not before I got there. I would still need to figure out the best way to get there over meandering desert roads. People did it all the time, still it made Mutti nervous.
She tapped her cigarette into the tray. I got up to refill out coffee cups.
“Travelling by yourself…” She was skeptical. “There must be some Hoovervilles out that way.”
I shrugged, I didn’t care. I was sixteen, which translates to fearless in at least seven languages. During the dark days of the depression - the ones we were living through remarkably well, mainly because of Mutti’s new line of work which seemed to be depression-proof - camps of homeless people sprang up on the outskirts of lots of cities. It didn’t seem that Death Valley would be the most hospitable place for the homeless to set up – at ground level the salt flats in the summer could exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit
“Maybe if you took a bus?” She said pragmatically, running her hands over the soft folds of satin in her lap.
I shook my head, “That doesn’t seem too bold or adventurous at all.” I protested.
“Well, look into it.” She blew the steam from her coffee. “I suppose you will stay at the Furnace Creek Inn.”
I nodded. The Furnace Creek Inn was really the only place to stay in Death Valley in 1933. It was a snazzy resort that was getting some press. That old cat Hedda Hopper had mentioned it many times in her column. Unsophisticated whelp that I was I believed everything Hedda wrote in her column. I would for years till I became the victim of it.
Known as the Hollywood Hatchet, Hedda Hopper, whose real name was Elda Furry, was one of the most feared people in Hollywood. A gossip columnist and former starlet, she had a weekly column filled with the doings and don’tings (especially the don’tings) of everyone who mattered and a few who were expendable in the film world. She dished rumor, innuendo, and unfounded lies, pulverizing grammar along the way. She had a huge reservoir of background dish with which she avenged herself on anyone who displeased her. Imagine today’s Page Six with the authority of the Washington Post during Watergate. Awesome power, appalling judgment. If Hedda said the stars were glittering in Death Valley, I knew they would damn well be glittering.
In my mind’s eye I saw myself as a very daring bright, young thing off on a madcap adventure mingling with stars and wild creatures. So naturally my first plan of action was choosing my wardrobe.
Slipping the crisp bills into my powder blue pocket book I set off for Madame Sofia’s house at Mama’s suggestion. Madame Sofia was Mama’s nightclothes connection. One must dress for life’s great adventures.
Sofia lived in one of the fairy-cottages pocketed three miles from the ocean in Carmel. Tucked amid plush greenery and flowering bushes, it looked like the backdrop of some tepid romance novel, complete with white painted arbor and rustic, wooden swing. Being careful not to step on any errant garden sprites that no doubt hid in the blooms, I made my way across the paving stones to her hyacinth-colored door. I knocked rapidly in my excitement. She opened the door immediately.
“Come in Abigail, drágám! I’ve set a few things out you will look divine in.”
Sophia’s consignment shop in her basement was Carmel’s best kept secret. A former silent screen actress, she became one of the casualties of the ‘Talkies” thanks to her heavy Hungarian accent. Smarter than most of her contemporaries, Sophia knew her career was over, well before Jack Warner did. Thinking ahead she cut a deal with a woman in the Warner Brother’s wardrobe department to buy the used movie clothes for a small price and resell them in Carmel. Warner’s had no tracking system for its costumes back then so much of the stuff Sophia carried were ‘lost ‘goods. Their loss was my gain. For a fraction of the price I dressed in glorious designer knock-offs created by some of Hollywood’s best seamstresses.
I called ahead and told Sophia of my plans. She laid out her latest ‘steals,’ an apricot wool suit, with a fetching beret that set off my fair skin as prettily as Magnin’s walls. It was from Sophia, I refined my sense of style. I’d been learning bits and pieces from the customers I modeled for. But Sophia was different, she didn’t view clothes they way a forty-year-old matron from Pasadena would. She judged what I wore with a filmmaker’s eye. Clean lines, just like I. Magnins. No frills.
“No affektálás, drágám!” She bellowed, should my hand caress an unneccesary ruffle with desire. Because I was long and lean, the day clothes she chose for me were mannish in styling, sporty. 1920’s rather than ’30s style. After the First World War, women’s fashion evolved toward what was known in France as the Garconne Look. Women wore clothes that hung from shoulders and hips without any pretence of a waist. Their dress lengths were gradually shortened to reach just below the knees when standing. When they sat, well, that was shocking – almost a whole length of gam could be revealed.
At the beginning of the thirties, hemlines dropped to the ankle and remained there till the war. Since my legs are my star attraction, Sophia worked around this by stocking my suitcase with lots of tennis skirts. She told me to pack my racket to justify my exhibitionism. Necklines were my nemesis. They were lowered while torsos were molded beneath squared shoulders. I have no breasts to speak of. And in the thirties busts were a-blooming. Dress bodices were designed with inset pieces and yokes. Necklines were scallop-edged or ruffled, pleated or otherwise plumped. They hung on my adolescent chest. I was born a decade too late for fashion. I would have made a fabulous flapper. No breast binding necessary for this girl.
Sophia dressed me from the inside out. To help me out in the bosom department, I purchased my first bra. Underpinnings of the early thirties continued to include the body armor known as the corset – happily bone-free by then. Corsets were brassieres and girdles with garters combined. By the late thirties, the separate bra and girdle had become acceptable. Thanks to my insider status with Sophia, my undergarments were the latest and the puffiest and the separatist, though it was only 1933.
Sophia was completely approving of women’s sportswear during this period. She loaded me up with some beautiful pieces. Sport suits, a soft caramel leather jacket cut slimly around my waist. Three pairs of draping trousers. I felt so daring. I’d seen slacks on Kate Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich of course, but they weren’t acceptable daywear for regular folk. It was still considered cross-dressing. Sophia convinced me to try them on. I felt daring, naughty and, really, quite sexy. I bought everything she suggested, including shoes and a funny-looking handbag made of leather rather than beads or mesh. It was a three pocket clutch with a large flap over the front. She gave me the name of a local artisan who would emboss my initials on the front. Trés raffinee, Drágám!
By the time I left Sophia’s, my upcoming trip seemed superfluous. I had just spent three hours in a fantasy world. I drove back from Carmel in a mist, clothes-drunk and delighted with myself. I pulled into our apartment parking lot to discover some show-off had parked his shiny yellow Ford Model A cabriolet in our spot. Feeling self-important and grown-up – I’d just purchased ‘slacks’ after all, I parked directly behind the car and hopped out. I looked inside the car for any indication of who the joker was. The caramel, leather interior was the same shade as my newly-purchased, leather jacket. It was beautiful, so supple. This car was not made for a man, not really, it was too pretty. It was meant to be driven by a self-possessed girl in a beret. A trouser-wearing girl of independent means. Me dammit. I was meant to drive a car like that. I took a quick glance behind me.
It was mid-afternoon. Nobody was around. I felt a pang of desire so strong, it remained unequalled till I met the love of my life. I opened the driver’s seat and slipped across the upholstery. It was a 1931, but like brand new. My fingers played over the carved wooden steering wheel. I pretended I was crossing the Mojave Desert in this sunshine chariot.
“Abigail!” My mother’s call pulled my out of my reverie.
I looked up guilty, but defiant. “Some wise guy parked in our spot, Mutti.” Stating the obvious is rarely a good strategy for distraction. I hopped out of the car fast.
“Language, Abigail! Don’t be disrespectful.”
I looked around for the object of my disrespect, puzzled. I turned back to look at Mama. She obviously had dinner plans. Her low-cut dress was fashionably festooned with shimmering beads. I smiled at how pretty she looked.
“Mutti, you’re too nice, let’s block him in.” Remember I was feeling very powerful, clothing does make the woman.
“The him is a her and the her is me, or you, really. I rented this for you, my love, to drive across the desert. What do you think? Too flashy?”
I gulped back my excitement. “Oh Mutti, yes, yes indeed, way too flashy!” I laughed. “It’s too flashy for anyone else, but it belongs to me. It’s beautiful, it’s, it’s summer in the desert.” I was reaching for words, angling for poetry. “Thank you so much, I adore it.” If I hadn’t towered over her, I would have leapt into her arms.
“Wait a minute,” I looked at her curiously, “I thought you wanted me to investigate the bus.”
She smiled. “Well, I investigated a bus and a car for you, since you seemed to prioritize like a sixteen-year-old young woman and put clothing before transportation.” She glanced at my packages in the back of the car. “You could take a Tanner Tour car with a friend from downtown straight to the Inn for $64.50 each round trip. So by yourself, it would be over one hundred dollars!”
I shrugged.
“You could take that and it would still leave you with over three hundred,” She glanced again at my packages, “Well, under three hundred dollars to stay at the Inn. So then I went to see the bus, very cheap but,” she pinched her face in a grimace. “Very pedestrian, darling, not very bold at all. - so here it is, your grand transportation. It is in excellent condition, one of my ‘friends’ had his mechanic look it over for me.”
Her face grew more serious. “Now I want you to plan this car ride carefully, it is eight hundred miles from Los Angeles to the Inn. Two hundred of that is in Death Valley. And it’s the summer. You’ll need to wear a broad brimmed hat to protect you skin and plenty of water.”
“Oh no,” I exclaimed, “I just bought this darling little beret, it’s too beautiful and I just look a picture in it.”
She rolled her eyes, “Wear it when you arrive, it’s one thing to be bold, but trust me there is nothing glamorous about arriving at the Furnace Creek Inn burnt to a crisp and gasping for water.”
I nodded in agreement, and looked at my dazzling car. It was even more beautiful than my apricot suit. Life was wonderful.
***

Shortly before I died I watched a made-for-T.V. movie on the life of William Powell. Normally I loathed television. The idea of people sitting around a plastic box night after night watching shadows live rather than living themselves, depressed me. However Bill had been my particular friend and by the end of my life I was mostly immobile, so I was a captive audience. Interesting – at least for me - was a section of the show devoted to my ‘discovery’ in Death Valley. The show was atrocious, but it did sum up the beginning of my climb quite neatly. Unfortunately the woman playing me was chinless. I have a terrific chin and therefore think badly of those without. With the advances made in plastic surgery; you’d think the actress’s agent would have suggested slicing a bit off her bazoom and attaching it to her jaw line.
The flashback scene in the movie is particularly moronic. One character is an out of work actor sitting on a barstool talking to the other character, a journalist, about the famous Slim Keith, the dialogue is awful, but to the information is about as true as anything ever is. An unkempt character actor playing an unkempt character actor named William looks up at the narrator of the story, a perky actress playing girl-reporter, from the worn barstool and gestures to the seat beside him. He takes a long, contemplative haul on his cigarette, (his career is dead so he’s sucking drama from every moment).
“The first time I saw Sunny,” he smiles sardonically, no doubt realizing how many times those words had been spoken by many different people, “was at San Simeon, you know, the Hearst mansion. She was long, lanky and lovely.” He speaks like a movie detective in a forties flick, “She walked in to the foyer wearing khakis like crepe. Her blond streak kind of glinted in the sun. That was the strangest thing that blond streak, the rest of her hair was shiny light brown, but in the front she had this one gold hank of hair. Remember in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Audrey Hepburn had that skunk stripe in her hair? That was a reference to Sunny. All the women thought she bleached it just to stand out, but back then that wasn’t her style.”
Marta, my maid who was watching it with me, and I snorted in unison. I ordered her to get up and make us some more martinis. I had no desire to view my life sober, after all I hadn’t lived it that way.
“How’d she get there? A 19-year-old from Wilshire Blvd. with no apparent connections and no starlet aspirations stays at the Hearst mansion for the weekend?” Girl-reporter interjects, doing her damnedest to register an intelligent glint in her eye.
Insightful girl-reporter then has a voice over. “One thing I’d learned about interviewing people nobody tells the same story as anybody else and nobody tells the same story twice – unless it’s a lie.”
“Bill Powell, I guess. They met at a hotel in Death Valley. No romance, just pals. Anyway Bill was the one who first called her Slim. This was in the thirties, Bill was huge. He’d been married to Carole Lombard, was engaged to Jean Harlow and had just begun the Thin Man Series with Myrna Loy. He was one of Hollywood’s leading men. Slim met him one day at their hotel. They started talking and remained buddies forever. Men just loved her, both as a woman and a friend. She was easy to be with and soft on the eyes.” Unkempt man talking again.
“So she was pretty sophisticated even then.”
Man laughs. “Yeah, Sunny was sophisticated. But not in that fake uppity way so many actresses were aping back then. More in the smooth way, like good Italian leather. She had the right answer for everyone. She didn’t blush, lose her cool, nothing fazed her. You know that old joke?”
Girl-reporter shakes her head and signals to the bartender for another round.
“The definition of sophistication: a guy walks in on his wife and her lover making love in his bed and he says to the lover, ‘Oh pardon me, feel free to continue.’”
Girl-reporter says “That’s the definition of sophistication.”
“No, the lover replies ‘Thank you I will.’ and he does. That’s the definition of sophistication.”
Girl laughs appreciatively. Man laughs appreciating being appreciated.
“That was Sunny. She’d continue, and then ask you to light her cigarette after.”
Marta and I looked at each other and dissolved into laughter. She switched off the television, and then carried over the pitcher and glasses.
“To think, Cecily spent a fortune on therapy trying to capture my essence. She simply needed cable.” I shook my head. Sipping the drink I nodded, “Good job.”
Marta smiled her thank you. “I wonder what they’ll say about Truman, he’s at least twice as famous.”
“Then they’ll make him out to be twice the shit.” I raised my glass for a refill. “Which, when you think about it, is only fair.”
***
My adventure began when I arrived at the Furnace Creek Inn, ‘a golden vision,’ as the actor William Powell later put it, driving up in my glamorous yoke of a car.
The car ride was treacherous. At first I loved every minute of it, every second I drove I felt lighter and more powerful, like I was a Goddess just awakening to her powers. On my journey, I discovered my lifelong passion: motion. It sounds corny by I liked the rush of the wind, the control of the direction, the anticipation of going without the responsibility of arriving. Most people, certainly Christian, my second husband, and Hemingway, even occasionally Tru attributed it to fear of boredom. So much for those supposed empaths. My love of motion, be it in conversation, travel or party-hopping had more to do with optimism - the certain knowledge that there was something extraordinary around the corner.
I made it out of L.A. fairly well, got turned around a couple of times near Johannesburg but eventually found my way to RT. 190. Luckily I got a flat before I hit 190. Because there were still plenty of kind gentlemanly gentlemen to help me, after that I would have been lost for sure. California has more mountain ranges than you can shake a slimy, possibly poisonous snake at. I had no idea and all of them seem deserted. There’s the Coso range, the Argus range, the Slate range, the Panamint range, the mind reels. Then I neared the Valley. I guess I pictured big sky and glorious scenery. I hadn’t really counted on the heat. Remember there were no air conditioners in ‘33. My lovely yoke of a car was feeling more like a fried egg. The last bit of the journey I must have finished off two gallons of water, and all I wanted to do was pee. Too shy to stop at the side of the road I kept on going straight through to the Furnace Creek Inn. I stopped a few minutes before pulling into the Inn to fix my hair and fashion my pert little beret on top of my head. I flung my broad-brimmed hat in the backseat and checked myself in my compact. I looked lovely. That’s the best part of being young, the effortlessness of beauty. One can be older and beautiful, but never with the same insouciance.
Bill Powell sidled up to the passenger side door of my car, “Hey sunny princess, that’s some fancy omelet you’re driving.”
I sighed, “Isn’t she extraordinary?” looking over my dusty chariot.
“Yes, she certainly is.” Powell responded looking me right in the eye.
I had to pee really badly. “Mr. Powell your dialogue needs work,” my cockiness was purely bladder-inspired, “My bags are in the back, sir, if you don’t mind.” I smiled wide.
Bill looked mildly astonished at my cheek, after all this man was not just a matinee idol, he was also two decades my senior. Still, he did as I asked - a useful lesson for a girl like me. I was desperate for the ladies room. So I swept up quickly to the front desk at Furnace Creek Inn with William Powell as my bell hop. I left him with my bags as I asked for directions to the powder room to freshen up. I didn’t even look back at him.
Relief, as they say, is only a tinkle away.
Well Hedda was right, I thought as I washed my hands. The stars are here. I took a long time washing my hands, because now that my immediate needs were taken care of I felt a little shy.