Life’s a Scream

Las Vegas loomed out of the shimmering heat haze like a mirage. I tried not to do the touristy thing and lean forward to look out of the window but that sort of control is beyond me. As we circled to land I thought I could pick out the constantly flashing, glaring names hyping the star-studded hotels that have taken the place of whitening bones and tumbleweed in the cardboard-brown desert. The plane levelled up on finals and sank decorously to the painted black strip of tarmac edged by low-level buildings and washed-out palm trees. My excitement increased – this was it. Three days of the biggest press junket they’d ever seen in America. And I was part of it. I checked my make-up as well as I could in a pocket mirror and tried to think of scintillating titbits for the press. After all, this was the big one. When I left the States a few years earlier I had flogged my heap of automotive rust at the airport and taken the first available flight out with the proceeds. Now was the triumphant return. Ticker-tape, gold-chained mayors, counter-marching mayorettes and a gold key. Or is that only in New York?

The doors opened and the heat hitting me in the face took my breath away. I shuffled out with the throng and looked for what, in those days, was the epitome of a status symbol – a stretch limo, preferably black, a Lincoln Continental no less. Zilch! Deflated, I followed the crocodile across the griddle-hot concrete into the ice shower of the reception buildings. Things started to look up immediately. A smartly dressed woman, with a clipboard welded to the crook of her left arm, gave a nurtured welcome smile and invited me to follow her. I had a moment of panic. What about my luggage? All that trendy gear I had spent hours trying on and visualising in action? Before I could communicate my secret horror of losing everything, my guiding light hailed a distant crumpled linen suit and told the wearer to pick up my bags and take them to the hotel. It wasn’t a scenario I was happy with but my misgivings were put on hold as I walked between rows of aggressive fruit machines, standing with arms at the salute like a well-trained band of military robots, into the sumptuous VIP lounge.

Another suit, this time immaculate in blue, slobbered over my hand at the door, told me archly that he was the vice-president of something or other and was on call to make my every wish come true. I gushed back and was disappointed that it wasn’t the President of MGM himself, putting his body at my beck and call. I turned to meet the press. What’s the collective noun for pressmen? A ‘flash’? Maybe a ‘clutter’? Whatever, there were more hot shots sucking pencils and burning flash bulbs than I had ever seen in my life. And they all called me ‘Heidi’ – the name of my character in the film I was there to promote, Where Eagles Dare. Rather sweet, really. And surprising. My role in the film was pretty good but it didn’t deserve this sort of attention. I should have been worried. Where were Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood? Or even Mary Ure? Making other movies – that’s where. Leaving me to do the ego-stroking job of promoting the film while they moved on to pastures new and pay-cheques big.

After half an hour of primping and posing the clipboard lady threw me a lifeline and suggested we move on to the hotel. I was torn between the thought that there might be someone who hadn’t captured my image on his emulsion and the knowledge that in spite of the ice-blast air-conditioning, the wedge of bodies had produced a temperature that was melting my make-up. I followed her out to the car. At least I rated a Cadillac. The short drive through the tawdry streets was a little depressing. Las Vegas was built and designed by a gang of vampires. Everything looks glitzy and expensive at night. The senses are overwhelmed by the millions of watts pumped out through the sparkling light from every ledge, roof-top and revolving door. Reality kicks in as the sun, a mephistophelean red, edges up over the hills and desert scrub. I tried not to notice the light sockets and angle iron, the paper blowing in the wind which carried sand in from the desert and coated everything in a dull layer of khaki. This was my day. I didn’t want to know about reality.

The booking in at Caesar Palace, again saluted by rows of attention-grabbing fruits, was satisfactory. Another ‘vice’ something or other went through the knuckle-grazing ritual and assured me that his casa was my casa. I dimpled prettily. By now I had got the picture. If there wasn’t too much effort involved I would be in line for an underling in an expensive suit and all the pressmen I could eat. I was beginning to come down off the mountain. Then the door to my suite was thrown open and I was sparkling again. Wall-to-wall flowers and a note that suggested I wasn’t going to be confined for ever to the realm of vice-presidents and under-managers. I waited until my escort left with renewed promises of eternal servitude, then leaped on to the flowers and shuffled through the wad of visiting cards: ‘For Heidi – welcome to Las Vegas – Bo Poke – President/MGM.’ ‘Welcome to America, F. Melnicker, President of Finance/MGM.’ ‘Knock ’em dead, kid! Luv – Alistair’ (MacLean). ‘Sorry not to be there with you, darling, Good Luck, Richard & Elizabeth.’ A sop, that one. Richard was much better off where he was making Staircase and knew it. I read the rest of the ritualised billets-doux and stored them carefully away in my little box purse that was all the rage in London but had also taken on a tackiness in my ostentatious surroundings. I considered a bath but rejected it in favour of crashing out on the luxurious charpoy, as big as a singles court, and buried myself under a heap of cushions and pillows.

My eyelids had hardly started to flutter when the telephone chirruped. Dazed after thirty hours with only a spine-snapping doze on the plane to fizz up the old batteries, it took me quite a while to realise that the one-armed bandit poised on the bedside table was doubling as a telephone. It was the lady with the clipboard whose name, if I remember rightly, was Soledad, and she had exciting news. El Presidente, Bo Poke, was already in the hotel and would like to meet me before the reception banquet – which, incidentally, was due to start in half an hour. I panicked. It would take me that much time to find a suitable frock. Never mind meeting the Poke bloke and doing all the things I should have done before diving into the pillows.

I made my entry into the Titanic-sized banqueting hall twenty minutes late and hating everybody. I was reminded not to get big ideas about my part in the PR operation by the fact that all of them were already seated at their tables and, if they weren’t exactly at the cheese and coffee stage, they were prodding the bread rolls and had their napkins strategically placed to catch any dribbles.

Bo Poke did his bit. After all, he was strapped into the chair that could become a throne or electric according to the international performance of the film that I was fronting. He massaged my ego into some sort of shape and made a big fuss of seating me beside him. I had been curious to meet him. There were so many stories going around the industry that I didn’t know what to expect. Someone pretty extraordinary, at least. You don’t get head-hunted by a super-conglomerate like MGM unless you are something a bit special. Only three months earlier he had been little more than a glorified grocer – well, president of General Foods, actually – but what had that to do with film? I asked him. He laughed. He had been given a crash course. It was, au fond, all the same thing. You buy a commodity, price it attractively, get a few dumb broads to waggle their butts suggestively and you are in profit.

I looked at him and struggled with the concept that he saw me as a dumb broad wiggling my assets and went off him. It didn’t bother him. He came out with ‘present company excepted’ but I read that as ‘accepted’ and withdrew my favours. As if he cared. Everyone was talking to everyone, tearing down reputations and questioning what everyone else was worth. I painted on a smile and went to sleep behind it. Which was fine – until Bo Poke jumped up and launched into a spiel which ended in a fanfare for Clint Eastwood. Nobody had bothered to tell me Clint was going to be there. It turned out that he had a couple of days off filming and had let MGM fly him in. I was glad of the distraction, I had the distinct impression that the head of finance was about to make a take-over bid for my prime assets. Clint and his wife Maggie were wonderful. He sailed charmingly down the line of executives, who stood to give him a welcoming ovation, until he reached me. I didn’t know what to expect. Clint gave a big hello, gathered me in his arms and let the suits know that we were brothers under the skin. It got better after that. He sat on the other side of Poke and made a point of chatting to me across the President’s soup plate.