Getting Garbo Read online

  It’s a funny thing, the star a fan picks to be her top favorite. Sometimes it seems like opposites attracting: the overweight chick from Bensonhurst who thinks the sun rises and sets on super-skinny Audrey Hepburn. Or maybe it’s a similarity that’s the pull: the tongue-tied boy who picks bashful Gary Cooper as his favorite. I also know a prissy gal from Tarzana who’s the head of the national Olivia de Havilland fan club. Those are not hard to figure out. But what do you say about this refugee kid in New York who does imitations in his native Bulgarian accent of his favorite, Jerry Lewis? All a mystery of personal tastes and quirks, I guess. Some of the collectors are kinda fickle, changing favorites from year to year. Always looking for a new face. But that’s not me, of course.

  For me, it’s always been Roy. Sometimes I’ve tried to figure out why. Sure, he’s a good actor, handsome and all. And we have a history in common, like I feel we both started out together and he was sort of my discovery, though I can’t ever say that to him. But from the beginning, just listening to him on the radio on Let’s Pretend, there was this special connection. Like I could hear something, and then see something not everybody gets. I mean, even now when he’s playing a tough guy (sort of elegant and all, but Jack Havoc does clobber Bad Guys in every episode), that’s not the real Roy—inside of him, there’s a gentle little boy who’s been hurt, but he keeps plugging away. That’s the essential Roy. I can see it in his eyes—in close-ups on the screen, or sometimes the way he smiles at me when I come up to him, particularly if it’s somewhere he didn’t expect me to find him.

  In the beginning, Mother thought my collecting autographs was cute. But then one of the neighbors in Brooklyn told her it was strange, and she always worries what people think, so Mother’s been ragging on me ever since. Running wild in the streets. That’s what she calls it. And don’t get her started on the subject of Roy. Did I mention that Mother became an astrology nut, really studied up on the stuff, worked out these involved mathematical charts where Cancer afflicts Aries and Mars is stepping on Venus with things ascending and descending all over the place. She got hold of Roy’s sun sign and even his exact time of birth from an astrology magazine and she ran a comparative chart on me, and then she points at this mumbo-jumbo and says it’s proof positive that Roy’s very bad for me. On a permanent, long-term basis.

  “He represents great peril, you must stay as far away from him as possible,” she says, as if I don’t get the idea that she’s stacked the deck to make it come out the way she wants: quit collecting. I hate being manipulated.

  Surrounding the framed glossy of Roy on my bookshelf is a series of smaller candid snapshots of me and Roy smiling together in front of various celebrated New York and Hollywood watering holes. In winter snows and sweltering heat waves. Rain and shine. Point being that us collectors, we’re the way the Pony Express used to be, like the U.S. Post Office used to claim to be, like nothing could stop us.

  Anyhow, that’s how the Secret Six were back in New York.

  • • •

  I was the youngest member of the Group (that’s what the Secret Six called ourselves), but I was used to that. I was always the youngest and smallest in any group I belonged to. The last to be chosen for any team, the last girl in my junior high school class who still hadn’t gotten her period. You get the idea. But at least I was smart and proved my worth to the Secret Six by solving the problem of how to get into radio shows whenever we wanted to.

  Back then there were a lot of star-studded radio shows emanating from New York that had audiences, The Fred Allen Show, Cavalcade of America, Kraft Music Hall, The Kate Smith Show and Theater Guild of the Air, not to mention the start of “live” TV shows like Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater. You needed tickets to get in, of course, and the collectors used to canvass the line before the show and ask if anybody had extra tickets, but that was uncertain and a bother.

  What I realized was that while the tickets were different colors from week to week, there weren’t that many different colors, and by checking the trash barrels behind the studios we could find used discards and soon we all carried a rainbow of CBS and NBC tickets in our pockets. Whatever color they were looking for, we had. We’d get in line with everybody else and when they finally let in the crowd it was always a last minute rush so when you reached the usher at the door who was collecting the tickets, you’d just give him the right color ticket and he never had time or inclination to read it. You’re probably thinking that’s what got me into the Secret Six, but actually I came up with that innovation after I was already a member.

  Want to hear about the way I got to join? It’s kind of an interesting story. One Saturday afternoon on one of those sticky hot summer days, I’d been waiting with the hordes at the stage entrance to the Roxy Theater for Abbott & Costello, who were appearing on stage in person. They never came out, but a flunky emerged to collect autograph books so the comedians could sign them inside. None of the Secret Six were there; you wouldn’t catch them at a mob scene like that. But from eavesdropping on their conversations outside Sardi’s and “21,” I was already aware of their rule that you have to see ’em sign for it to count, and I also was scared to let my shiny new autograph book out of my hands because I might not get it back. So I didn’t toss my book in with the others going inside and I walked off instead. It was almost time for the end of the matinee performance of Streetcar and I was only a few blocks away. The guy Roy Darnell was understudying had the flu, so Roy was going on and I could say hello when he came out.

  It was still a little early as I got to the Ethel Barrymore Theater. When I stepped out of the baking sun into the shadowy shelter of the stage door alley, there was one other person there. A mulatto girl with frizzy blonde-streaked hair, wearing dungarees and a black blouse. She was four, five years older than me, and she was perched on an orange crate, leaning back against the wall near the stage door. She was smoking a cigarette and softly singing Teresa Brewer’s hit song that you heard everywhere then: “Dum-dee-dum-dee-daddee-dum, all I want is loving you and music, music, music…” When she saw me, she stopped singing and offered me a cigarette. I told her I’d quit. “More like y’forgot t’start, right, missy?” She had a real nice smile. You had to smile back at her.

  Her name was Tamar and she asked me what I was doing there. Told her I was an autograph collector and that tickled her some more. She wanted me to show her my book and when she saw I had John Garfield and Lena Horne, that really kayoed her. Not that she didn’t see stars all the time herself. Tamar was the assistant wardrobe mistress on Streetcar and she was out here grabbing a smoke before going back in to collect the costumes after the performance.

  “Just gotta keep track of ’em,” she explained. “Hardly ever wash them clothes, them actors play some pretty gamy characters, know what I mean?”

  I nodded like I did. But I didn’t really know what Streetcar was about until I saw the movie a few years later. I seized the opportunity to get the inside scoop and asked Tamar what Roy Darnell was like backstage. She thought about it. “Little sloppy, Roy. Tends to drop his costume on the dressing room floor, but I chastised him, in a nice gentle way, o’course, and he’s a doll now.”

  That’s when the idea came up. Tamar glanced at her watch. “Gotta go in pretty soon, but—hey, wanna come with me? See what it looks like backstage, watch the curtain calls from the wings?”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Sure,” I said, “if I won’t be in the way.”

  “Then let’s go. But Doc, the snoopy ol’ doorman, won’t let you in here so we gotta go in the alley door on the other side of the theater.”

  We went around the front to the other alley, but before we went in there Tamar remembered that she’d promised to bring back a carton of cigarettes for Marlon Brando. “Got ’em upstairs.” She pointed at her apartment, over there, in one of the rundown tenements a few doors down the street. “Just take a second, c’mon, hurry girl, we don’t wanna miss th
e curtain call.”

  Tamar slapped her palm on the buzzer panel, pressing several of the buttons, and laughed. “Gets some of the neighbors pissed when I do this,” she confided, “oughta use my key, but this way be faster.” She got an answering buzz and shoved open the door. We went up to the second floor landing. From above, a voice asked who’s there? “Jus’ me, sorry t’bother ya,” Tamar called back. A door slammed. Tamar put her index finger to her lips in a shushing gesture and then she sat down on the top step. She patted a spot beside her. I didn’t know what we were doing, but I sat down. She looked deep into my eyes, like she was searching for something.

  “Where y’live? What part a’ the city?” she asked.

  “Brooklyn. East New York–Brownsville.”

  “I hear you folks ain’t been treatin’ my people good out there. You been treatin’ ’em like they a buncha niggers!”

  “I—I—” I phumphed. Tamar slapped me across the mouth. Real hard, I tasted blood.

  “Don’ lie to me, you lil’ Jew bitch! Lemme see that watch.”

  I heard myself talking. Trying to sound casual, as if what was happening was normal and okay, as I unbuckled the watchband. “It’s not an expensive watch, just a—”

  She slapped me again. I winced. Handed her the watch. She put it in her pocket and while she went through my purse and took the $3 she found there, she pointed at my hand. “Now the ring. Give it here!”

  My daddy’s ring. The one real present I ever got from him. There would be no more.

  “Look, Tamar, don’t get mad but that’s kinda special, I mean I don’t think it’s worth much, but the sentimental value—”

  I was spritzing blood at her as I babbled. Maybe that’s why she punched me in the gut. My eyes filled with tears and I blinked to keep her in focus as I pulled at the ring. I really tried, but it wouldn’t come off. “I haven’t taken it off since my Dad gave it to me—”

  A switchblade snapped open. Tamar pointed the tip of the blade at the ring. “Want me t’get it off for ya, honey?”

  I tugged extra hard and got it off and dropped the ring into her waiting palm. She closed the switchblade and stood up. She told me that after she left I was to count to a hundred slowly before leaving the building. And if I yelled or came running after her sooner she would cut my eyes out.

  “Y’believe me?”

  I did.

  She trotted off. I counted to myself, slowly, added an extra fifty after the hundred. Then I got up and went down the stairs, holding on to the banister because my legs were pretty shaky. It’s not like I was scared, though, more like I was far away, watching myself, as if it was a movie. I was ultra-clear about every detail that was going on.

  Open the front door. Peek outside. Make sure she’s gone. She is. Step outside. Look all around. No Tamar. If that’s her real name, probably not. A lie. Like all the rest. Streetcar’s over. Crowd coming out. Should I go to the cops? Where’s the police station? There’s a black limo, 8Z plates, the kind hired by the studios. Waiting near the stage door alley. There’s some of the Secret Six. Pam O’Mara, the older gal who’s like the den mother of the Group. Tillie Lust (her real last name, I found out later, is Lustig), a couple of the guys, the one they call Podolsky. Why’re they here? Something special. I stand in the darkness. Be inconspicuous. Secret Six don’t like me tagging after them. But I was here first.

  Stage door opens. Pam O’Mara puts a flashbulb in her camera, it’s Kirk Douglas and his wife, didn’t even know he was in New York. Collectors converge. I duck under Podolsky’s arm, shove my book in with the others, Tillie glares at me. Then her expression goes funny. Kirk Douglas and his wife get in the limo.

  Here’s Roy. Sure is cute. People asking him to sign their programs, without me starting it up. Guess he was real good today. Mr. and Mrs. Darnell. Roy and Addie. They were just married a few weeks ago. For richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. Secret Six all staring at me. Have to tell ’em I didn’t follow ’em. Roy talking to me, “What happened, Reva?” Now he’s looking funny. Pam and Tillie alongside me, “It’s okay, Mr. Darnell. We’ll take care of it.”

  They took me to the ladies room at Child’s cafeteria on Broadway and cleaned me up. My face was swollen and bloody. There was more blood running down my legs. My first period, how’s that for timing? Pam sent Podolsky and the one they call Charming Billy back to the theater to check on Tamar. That was before I started to puke. I thought I’d never stop. Tillie held my head. It was very embarrassing. I told them losing Daddy’s ring was all I was upset about. Podolsky came back and knocked on the ladies room door and told us nobody named Tamar works at Streetcar and the assistant wardrobe mistress is a little old Polish lady.

  When I was calm again, Pam O’Mara asked if I wanted them to take me to the police station. I said no, because then my mother’d find out. So how was I going to explain this mess? I’d tell mother that I fell down the subway steps in Brooklyn on my way home. “If she knows what really happened, she’ll never let me come collecting again.” They said they understood and they walked me to the subway and told me they hoped I’d feel better and they’d see me next week.

  That was the big lesson I learned. Something good can come out of something bad. I’d lost Daddy’s special ring. But after that I wasn’t an outsider among the autograph hunters anymore. I was part of the Group.

  March 16, 1951.

  The day I became a woman.

  The day I stopped being a crumb collector.

  • • •

  “Hey, good lookin’,” I say with a wink at Roy’s glossy framed image in the center of my bedroom shelf. I’m stretched out on my cot, looking up at the so-called altar, feeling pretty bad.

  I picked up a copy of the early edition of tomorrow’s L.A. Times and read it on the bus on the way home tonight. There’s a story on the bottom of page one saying that Roy and Adrienne Darnell have been granted an interlocutory divorce decree that will become official in a few months.

  Seeing Roy today shooting out on the location, even though I couldn’t get close enough to talk to him or even that treacherous lout Killer Lomax, I knew there was something wrong. He must’ve known already and was taking it hard.

  He tries to cover up his feelings a lot of the time, but I can usually read him. There are so many different Roys: the happy kid, the holy terror, the sad sack, the wild man, the dreamer, the screamer. I guess I’ve seen them all by now, on screen and off. He can change in a blink. Once, outside Toots Shor’s in New York, after he was starring in Jack Havoc, he got into this violent hassle with the doorman for giving away his cab to someone else, and I don’t know what came over me but I got in between them, to keep Roy, who was pretty looped, from getting into trouble. For a split second I thought for sure he was gonna punch me out, but then he focused and saw it was me, and all the rage vanished. He winked at me, then turned to the doorman and said, “You oughta thank Reva, she just saved you a busted schnoz.” And he kissed me on my cheek. So much for Mother and her astrology predictions.

  It’s time for my evening ritual. I go into the closet and kneel, moving aside a stack of old magazines, and pry at a floorboard, pulling it out to reveal a sturdy wooden box. Even if Mother finds this hiding place, as she’s found others in the past, I’ve got the only key to this padlock, too. I unlock the box, revealing the stack of precious journals that I’ve been confiding my innermost thoughts to since I was thirteen.

  I look up at the shelf. Right in front of the big portrait of Roy, there’s a black leather glove, hole ripped in the thumb, that he tossed away on Fifth Avenue in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral after slipping on the icy pavement and tearing it. It was a Sunday in March, there’d been a huge snow storm the night before, and the snowplows hadn’t cleared Fifth Avenue yet so there were no cars or buses running, just people walking down the center of the street, like a winter wonderland. One guy actually whooshed by o
n a pair of skis.

  I’d spotted Roy and Addie coming out of the church, don’t know why I didn’t go up to them and say hello, I guess maybe I thought it’d be sacrilegious or something, although the Group had successfully staked out Loretta Young and Irene Dunne together once at St. Paddy’s Easter Mass, but they were superstars and quite rare in New York. Anyway, once I saw Roy slip on the ice, I thought it’d be embarrassing, so I just picked up the glove and followed them, Roy and Addie. I stayed on the sidewalk, and they were up ahead, in the snow-packed roadway, holding hands, talking and laughing, then they got into a thing of throwing snowballs at each other, Roy getting hit in the chest and pretending it was a fatal shot, hamming it up, making her laugh even harder, then he rushed her and rubbed a snowball in her face and then he kissed her. Nobody else was paying much attention to them. Roy wasn’t famous yet, so I felt like this was a private movie and I was the entire audience and I loved the way they so clearly were in love with each other.

  I’m sure of it.

  I sit cross-legged on the floor and write my thoughts in the journal. They come out in a jumble:

  I know I’m behaving bizarrely, is there such a word? Well, awfully strange anyway, like Mommy and Daddy are breaking up and what’s to become of little me. It’s only another Hollywood divorce, and I never got to know Addie that well, so it’s probably foolish to be going on like this.

  But I feel bad for them.

  Especially Roy.

  And, yes, I do feel bad for me, too.

  See, I don’t have high school football games and senior proms to look back on. I never took part in all that ordinary stuff, but now it feels like a chunk of my own personal history is being rewritten, retroactively. Memorabilia. Some of my most important memories are falling apart.

  I stop writing and look at the words I’ve put down. I don’t know if they make any sense, but it’s how I feel.