Kathryn knocked on Marcus’ door. When he opened it, she pressed her finger to his lips. Given the recent tension between them, she knew it was a bold move, but desperate times called for audacity. He’d been the Rock of Gibraltar the night they learned of Nelson’s banishment, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was relieved Nelson was out of the picture. Knowing that Nelson sacrificed his career for her shook her to the core, and suddenly she missed him dreadfully.
“I want you to come with me,” she told Marcus. “Now. Are you free?”
He nodded, with unblinking eyes, wary but hopeful.
It was October now, two months since that night at Wesley Hoyt’s store. The following day, she presented him with a special bottle of Four Roses she’d tracked down. The guy at the liquor store on Wilshire assured her it was from the final batch they produced before Prohibition officially kicked in. This brought about a tacit détente, and since then they’d danced around each other like ballerinas in barbed wire tutus, but it wasn’t enough. She missed their intimacy as desperately as she missed Nelson.
When he grabbed his hat and coat and asked if he’d need his car keys, she told him yes. They were driving past the Elizabeth Arden salon on the Sunset Strip before he asked where they were going.
“To a meeting of the Committee for the First Amendment.”
He let out a terse “hm.”
“When you testify to the HUAC, the people at this meeting will be the ones cheering you on.”
After suffering through a summer of the HUAC’s rabid headline-hogging, screenwriter Philip Dunne and directors John Huston and William Wyler decided they’d had enough and formed the Committee for the First Amendment. Word reached Kathryn that the next meeting was at Ira Gershwin’s home in Beverly Hills that night. She wasn’t sure if it was invitation only, but it was worth a shot.
Boisterous conversation poured through the open windows of 1021 Roxbury Drive as they walked up the flagstone path. Kathryn’s heavy-handed tap on the silver knocker brought Paulette Goddard to the door. Her “Oh!” suggested she was surprised to see them standing there, but she stepped back and let them in. She pointed to a pair of white louvered doors on the far side of the marble and chandelier foyer. “Bar’s on the left.”
They walked into a living room that was easily four times the size of Kathryn’s entire apartment. A Chagall dominated the room from above an ornate mantle and a picturesque pumpkin display filled the fireplace below.
Someone had artfully arranged a maze of sofas, love seats, and occasional chairs, all upholstered in autumnal colors, from the red of Japanese maples to the dark greens of a Pacific Northwest fir. Congregating around the furniture in bunches were some of the most prominent people in Hollywood. The huddle to Kathryn’s right included Danny Kaye and Edward G. Robinson, deep in conversation with Frederic March and Rita Hayworth.
Past them, by Gershwin’s floor-to-ceiling teak bookcase, stood Judy Garland and Groucho Marx. Kathryn nudged Marcus. “Let’s break some ice with Judy and Groucho. I haven’t seen him since the Go West premiere.”
But they were still picking their way through the crowd when William Wyler pinged his martini glass with a spoon. “I think it’s about time we started,” he announced. “We do have an agenda, so unless somebody has a particularly urgent concern they want addressed, we can—”
“YEAH!” a voice pitched over the crowd, stopping all conversation cold. “I’ve got an issue, and I think it ought to be dealt with first.”
All eyes turned to Edward G. Robinson. At a diminutive five foot seven, he was hardly the shortest star in Hollywood, but his magnetism ballooned to occupy a space twice his size.
The actor used his fat cigar to point at Kathryn. The bodies closest to her inched away silently. Marcus stayed put, but she sensed him stiffen.
“The whole point of this meeting is that we get to express our frustrations over what’s been going on,” Robinson said, his eyes unforgiving. “But now I see we’ve got Billy Wilkerson’s handmaiden in our midst, and suddenly I’m not so sure I can speak my mind as freely as I’d like.”
“Eddie,” Wyler said, “I’ve never met Miss Massey myself, but she’s got a reputation that hardly—”
“I want to hear what she has to say,” Philip Dunne announced.
Kathryn considered his recent The Ghost and Mrs. Muir screenplay was about as close to perfection as one could get, and she was disappointed to hear his wary tone match Robinson’s. She felt the heat of forty pairs of eyeballs on her, and decided to play offence.
“More than half the people here know me personally,” she said, rotating slowly to survey the crowd. “Either from interviews, or on my radio show, or from some party or other. So I must say I’m disappointed that my motives have come into question here.”
The room was graveyard silent. She glanced at Marcus to gauge how she was doing, but his face remained inert.
“Believe me,” she persevered, “I am as horrified as any of you with my boss’ views. If you’ve read my column, you’ll know my stance in this situation, but for those who haven’t, allow me to state it as clearly as I can. As far to the right as Billy Wilkerson sits on the political spectrum, I sit on the left.”
Kathryn’s stomach dropped a hundred feet when she realized what she’d said. The far-left equivalent of Wilkerson’s right-wing stance wasn’t bleeding-heart liberalism, but the extremity that encompassed anarchists, subversives—and Communists.
The only sound was the sonorous ticking of a grandfather clock in some other room.
Please, dear God, will somebody say something? Anything!
Gershwin’s front door slammed. Humphrey Bogart appeared through the louvered doors with Lauren Bacall trailing him. He stopped when he realized he’d walked into a packed room where nobody was talking.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m defending my right to be here,” Kathryn said, “to a bunch of people who seem keen to pronounce me guilty by association to Wilkerson.”
Bogie raised his eyebrows, slow and wary, as he looked around the room. Bacall stepped to one side to let Gene Kelly hobble into view on the crutches he needed after recently spraining his ankle in rehearsal.
Bogie said, “Maybe what they’re really wondering is, Are you here as a concerned citizen, or as a responsible member of the press?”
Bless you, Humphrey Bogart, for inserting “responsible” in that question.
“Both,” Kathryn said, ‘but I’m starting to feel like this is Salem, and I’m Abigail Williams.”
“She’s right about one thing,” Dunne said, “this whole stinkpile shows every indication of deteriorating into a witch hunt. Billy Wilkerson has been fanning the flames of this fire—”
“He’s the one who started it in the first place!” someone interjected.
“The things he’s said in his column have been malicious and incendiary,” Dunne continued, “and will end up costing people their livelihoods if we don’t fight back.” A murmur of approval swelled across the room. “What troubles me is that it’s Wilkerson who pays Miss Massey’s salary, so at the end of the day, she owes her allegiance to—”
“May I say something?”
It was Marcus. Kathryn looked at him. Please don’t let me hang out to dry.
“My name is Marcus Adler. I head up the writers’ department at MGM. I am here because I’ve been subpoenaed to testify at the HUAC hearings in Washington next month.”
The morning after the subpoena, Marcus had reported what happened to Mayer and Mannix, who told him it was no big deal. All he had to do was parrot the company line—and tell nobody about his summons. They wanted the drama of the HUAC’s first surprise witness to be an MGM’er. He promised he would, so this announcement was a major transgression, but Kathryn could see it gave her instant credibility.
“I didn’t know about tonight’s meeting,” Marcus continued, “until Kathryn knocked on my door an hour ago. She insisted we come here, and when I asked her why, she said, ‘Because when you testify, those people will be the ones cheering you on.’ Those HUAC pigs want us to suspect each other. They’d love nothing better than to see accusations of disloyalty and sabotage flying around town. If this committee is going to achieve anything, then everybody needs to start rowing in the same direction, because we have everything to lose.”
Bogie started to clap—slow and rhythmic, like a metronome. Lauren joined him, then Gene Kelly. On the other side of the room, Frank Sinatra was the next to add his support, picking up the pace. One by one, each member of the Committee for the First Amendment added to the applause until Ira Gershwin’s living room was filled with approval.
* * *
Marcus switched on his headlights and waited for Judy Garland to pass before pointing his car toward Sunset.
Kathryn settled back in her seat, still buzzing. She felt like she had the energy to run all the way home. “That sure was a hell of an evening, huh? So many articulate and savvy people, and so passionate and united over an issue. Did you read in the Examiner last month when it quoted that freshman congressman who just joined the HUAC?”
“Richard Nixon?”
“Yeah, him. What a weed. He said the HUAC will uncover the ‘Red network’ and names will be named, and the whole thing will be ‘sensational.’ Somehow, I don’t think he quite reckoned on the Committee for the First Amendment. Did I tell you Wilkerson and I have been fighting over my pro-freedom-of-speech columns? Oh boy, but my boss sure can swear a blue streak. When I told him I want to be in Washington for the hearings, he said there’s no value in a trip like that. I nearly threw his telephone at him.”
“Do you miss him?”
The unexpected turn left Kathryn confused. “Wilkerson? I did when he was in Paris, but now I sometimes wish he hadn’t hurried back so fast.”
“I meant Hoyt.”
Marcus’ voice was low and measured. She briefly considered downplaying how she felt, but decided that would be disrespectful to both men. There’d been enough lying in Hollywood over the past year. “Yes,” she told him, “I miss him terribly.”
Marcus let a block or two slip past. “Have you been sleeping with him?”
She kept her eyes fixed on the deserted boulevard stretching before them. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“On the grounds it may incriminate you?”
“On the grounds that it’s none of your business.”
Without warning, Marcus veered the car to the curb and pounded the brakes, his hands clenched around the steering wheel. “Since when is your life none of my business? I thought there were no fences between us.”
“And I thought I had your unconditional support,” she shot back.
“You do.”
“I did . . . until I found myself in a situation that you didn’t approve of. It’s not ideal, I know that. But when love comes along—”
“So it’s love, is it?”
The scorn in his voice felt like a slap.
“Heading that way.” She chose her words prudently. “I don’t dispute for a minute that you had every right to be suspicious of a guy like that, but after hearing what happened between him and Hoover, I’d have thought you’d give him some credit, if only for getting you out of the Mandeville raid.”
“I still say he did it to further his own aims.”
“What he did was save your career!” Suddenly it felt stuffy inside Marcus’ car. She cracked open her window and let the cool October air breeze in. “And now he’s probably saved mine—and, may I add, at the expense of his own. Jesus, Marcus, you make him sound like he’s Goering or Himmler or somebody.”
Marcus looked at her like a wounded dog. “He works for Hoover.”
“Who deported him to Zanzibar. Look, Marcus, I’m thirty-nine and this is only the second time love has come along for me. The first one was married, so it’s not like my track record is anything to write home about.”
“You talk about it as though he’s your last chance.”
A part of Kathryn realized maybe Marcus was right. After all, everyone knew that turning forty led to a long, steep slide into middle age. But that was something to think about at another time. For right now, she felt like Marcus was slipping from her grip and she needed to change tack.
“If you stop and think about it, you can see everything that’s been going on—the Pinkos, the Commies, Reds in the Beds, the Committee for the First Amendment, the HUAC—it’s all about trust, isn’t it? Me trusting you and you trusting me, Hollywood people trusting each other, and even Americans trusting their government, or rather knowing when not to. The point being, if we don’t have people in our lives who we can trust, it all comes down.”
“It is all coming down!” Marcus snarled.
“Exactly my point!” Kathryn wanted to reach out and grab Marcus by the hand, or maybe the arm. She wanted to feel connected to him, but couldn’t be sure that it was the right strategy, so she just angled her body toward him.
“These are all just circumstances,” she said soothingly. “We’ve both been around long enough to know this whole Pinko scare will blow over sooner or later. Hollywood’s not going anywhere—there’s too much money to be made. And when this whole Red thing crumbles away, we’ll still be here. You, me, Gwennie, Oliver . . . maybe Nelson, if I can track him down. And if I do, all I want is for you to be happy for me, Marcus, as I was for you when Oliver came along.”
“Oliver and I is a whole different situation,” Marcus said.
Kathryn felt like her back foot was teetering on the edge of a cliff. She didn’t want her friendship with the most precious person in her life to tumble over the brink, but she couldn’t let him get away with a statement like that.
“It’s not, you know,” she said. “It’s exactly the same.”
“The hell it is.”
She took a deep breath. “For you screenwriters, the Breen Office and its antiquated rules are the enemy. I may have kissed my enemy once or twice, but you’ve been sleeping with yours for how long now?”
“That’s unfair and you know it.”
“No, Marcus, I don’t. We’re both guilty of falling for the enemy, so you’d think we’d both understand how the other feels. But we can’t if one of us is being a hypocrite.”
“What did you just call me?” Marcus exploded.
She gripped the hand rest. “You heard right.”
“Our circumstances are completely different!”
“How?”
“Because Oliver intentionally went to work for the Breen Office to change it from the inside. Your Nelson Hoyt joined the FBI through some misguided attempt to uphold patriotic ideals—”
“MISGUIDED? Oh, come on, you’re assuming an awful lot.”
“—to uphold patriotic ideals that Hoover regards as a temporary obstacle between him and his ambitions. When Oliver does his job, a couple of sex scenes and a joke about the clergy get taken out of some crummy movie nobody will remember a month later. When Hoyt does his job, lives are destroyed, careers are threatened, and reputations are ruined. It’s hardly the same thing at all.”
“It is the same thing,” Kathryn insisted. “It just comes down to a matter of degrees.”
“I’m about to get on a train and go to Washington, where I’ll have to sit before the HUAC with the whole country listening. Meanwhile, you’re tracking down some G-man because you think he’s your last stop before Spinsterville. How is that the same thing?”
It took all the willpower Kathryn could summon not to take his bait.
“You need to trust me on this, Marcus. Nelson might be FBI, but he’s a hell of a decent guy.”
“That’s a laugh and a half. You know, with everything that’s been going on, I thought I could at least trust you!”
She felt as though the edge of that cliff was collapsing under her heel. “Of course you can!”
“Apparently not.”
“Don’t say that, Marcus, honey. Please, let’s not fight—”
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out of my car.”
But you stood up in front of that crowd tonight, she wanted to say. You came to my defense with such loyalty that I nearly cried. We’ve been there for each other for twenty years. Please tell me this just a hiccup along the way and not where it all ends.
“GET THE HELL OUT OF MY CAR BEFORE I PUSH YOU OUT!”
Half-blinded by panic and trembling with fear of the unknown, Kathryn opened the passenger door and stepped onto the deserted sidewalk, and watched through tears as Marcus roared off without so much as a sideways glance.