September 1961
We were coming in to land. It was hard to believe. I was glued to the window, gazing down at the sprawl of Los Angeles, low square blocks of buildings spreading as far as the eye could see. We’d flown under clear skies, but it was evening now, dusky and hazy, and the city had a spattering of lights. I felt aflame, burning with anticipation and thrill. Nervous, too: my heart was spinning, the blood speeding in my veins.
Somehow we’d found the fares, the lowest class but still a whopping £239 10s return. Joe had sold a pair of antique Chinese Canton vases, one of his sillier extravagances bought after seeing something similar, staying with one of his smart-set friends.
He nudged me with his elbow. ‘We may have to get a cab. I’m not sure if we’ll be met.’ He sounded surprisingly unsure of himself. It must be even more unnerving for him, I realised, the thought of the recording sessions, being neither too pushy nor fawning; properly respectful while needing to sound in the know. Quizzing a legend like Frank must seem more daunting than a whole row of first nights.
‘You’ll do great,’ I said warmly, and he squeezed my hand, giving me hope.
‘I’d bloody better! I’ve never written a book before.’ It was rare for Joe to show any vulnerability and to need a moment of togetherness. As we stepped down onto the tarmac, the start of a unique shared adventure on the other side of the globe, I carried on daring to hope that it could bring us a little closer and help to heal scars.
We joined a wearyingly long line of tired travellers, shuffling forward, passports clutched. ‘It’s a bit of dump, this place,’ Joe said, looking round. ‘I expected LA’s airport to be state-of-the-art; instead it’s like a load of old Nissan huts.’
‘It’s temporary,’ a man in front of us said, swinging round with a look of affront. He had on a black motorcycle cap with a Triumph winged logo. ‘The airport’s being rebuilt.’
‘It’s our first time in America,’ I explained, trying to make up for ‘old Nissan huts’, ‘Terribly exciting.’
Joe dug me in the ribs. ‘For God’s sake!’ he hissed. ‘Think he gives a damn?’
A woman edged up beside me and stared. ‘My, just look at you . . . you an actress? You must be a famous lady.’ Joe looked irritated. He was the famous one, not me.
The beefy-armed guy who stamped our passports chatted about his aunt in Liverpool and wished us a great vacation. Through customs, though, and uncertain what to do, the airport felt a colder place. People pushed and jostled, no one seemed approachable.
A youngish man wearing a natty, sharp-pressed dark suit came towards us. ‘Mr Joe Bryant?’ he enquired. ‘I’m here to meet you, the limo’s right outside. I have a note from Mrs Romanoff.’ Keeping hold of a pair of black leather gloves, he felt in a pocket and handed over a heavy cream envelope, blue-edged and crested. ‘I’m Arthur, by the way,’ he said. ‘You folks stay close and the porter will follow.’
The limo was vast, long and black, luxuriously carpeted. Splits of champagne in a bucket, along with two flute glasses, were wedged on a ledge. ‘Wayho!’ Joe exclaimed, grabbing one, popping the cork and catching the spills with puppy-like licks of his tongue.
We read Gloria’s note. Welcome friends! We want you to hurry and come to a party! Arthur will take you directly to the house – the maid is there to look after you – and he’ll bring you on to the restaurant just as soon as you’ve freshened up. We’re hosting the party in the ballroom and it’s a black-tie affair. Longing to see you, make it as soon as you can!
We’d been on the go for eighteen hours. We were on borrowed time, though, and riding high. Joe was grinning like a hyena.
The Romanoffs’ guest cottage was thoughtfully furnished with curtains and loose covers in matching chintz. It was an English look, yet with little differences, another way of folding towels, an abundance of cushions; jelly beans in a bowl, spare toothbrushes . . .
‘Stop gawping, can’t you?’ Joe yelled from the bathroom. ‘Let’s get there.’ I dived into my suitcase, settling on a dropped-shoulder white silk top and a long taffeta skirt; my own clothes, not Alicia’s, the skirt full and a jewel-coloured tartan, ruby, emerald and amethyst.
I had brought one or two of her outfits with me. I’d fought with my pride, but in the end felt a grim masochistic need to make Alicia very well aware of me, to plant myself squarely in her path to Joe and try to touch her conscience. I was Joe’s wife and he was signed up to me, not her, and we were off to California. Alicia would be far away, out of sight – if not out of his thoughts or mine.
She’d pressed me about the clothes as well, calling after Rory’s party, suggesting a time to come, but in the event it had been ghastly. Being in her bedroom, stiffly polite, choosing a couple of outfits – any two, I didn’t care, didn’t want to take them – a print dress, a heathery wool suit with strips of black braid on the front like a devil’s fork. I’d left her large silent house in Belgravia with the clothes in a transparent, zipped moth-protector over my arm, feeling mangled and trampled, wretched, humiliated.
Whether or not she’d intended to hurt and shock was hard to know, but Alicia had managed it triumphantly – simply by telling me the story of the run of cupboards along her bedroom wall. ‘A hidden door was left in at the back when they were built,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t show at all from the landing side with the patterned wallpaper, and I’ve always thought what a typically French little touch. We’d bought the house from a Parisian couple, in fact. I mean, a lover hearing a returning husband on the stairs would only have to dart in there, behind all the clothes, and make good his escape!’
How could she have said that? Had she no shred of sensitivity in her soul? It slowed me up, sitting on a padded chintz stool in Beverly Hills, putting on false eyelashes, the bile rising inside me all over again. Alicia might be thousands of miles away, yet I could never escape like the lover in the cupboard. She was constantly in my mind.
It was tiredness, I told myself, making me turn up that particular stone. And I’d been feeling so elated, on such a high.
Joe was staring at me in a vacant way. He looked coolly glamorous in his dinner jacket, slim and sinuous, very British. ‘Will I do?’ I asked, needing reassurance. ‘They’re sure to be dressed up as if it’s a Royal banquet. Do you think Sinatra will be there?’
‘Dunno. Come on, if you don’t stop wittering, we’ll never find out.’
Sharp-suited Arthur was waiting and we drove in style the short distance to Romanoff’s. He shook his head vehemently when Joe felt in his pocket. ‘Oh no, you put that back, Mr Sinatra’s orders. You go on in and have yourselves a grand time.’
Shown to the ballroom, we stayed by the door, adjusting to the low lighting, the buzz of chatter rising above the band, the red-plush luxury. The crisp starched linen on the tables looked almost fluorescent, brilliant white squares dotted around the floor, which was packed with couples dancing. Many of the faces seemed uncannily familiar. I had the weirdest feeling, staring round at a roomful of strangers, of knowing half the people there.
Gloria saw us. She hurried over with enthusiastic greetings, and as we joined her husband Mike at the table, he rose, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Gorgeous girl,’ he said, giving me a squeeze.
‘Frank’s just talking to Tuesday Weld,’ Gloria said. ‘He’ll be with us in a minute. He’s on our table, and Bob Hope and Dolores are, too. Oh, do look at Bob on the dance floor, showing off those fancy steps of his!’
Bob Hope was twizzling and pointing his toes, laughing with his partner as they swirled around, looking for all the world like someone I knew of old. It was surreal.
‘And isn’t that Bing Crosby as well?’ I asked, staring gormlessly. ‘And Edward G Robinson! I’ve seen so many of his films. My father used to take me as a child.’
‘We’ll get Eddie over,’ Mike said. ‘You must meet him. He’d love meeting you too, you can be sure.’
‘Hey, you’re here, you made it, that’s a gas!’ Frank joined us, flashing his familiar white-teeth smile. He immediately took charge, summoning a waiter, seeing to people’s drinks and the wine. He ordered a Mouton Rothschild ’49.
Joe looked astounded. ‘And I’m still reeling from that monumental Margaux ’47 we had at the Mirabelle,’ he said. ‘It’ll be hard landings back home!’
Frank grinned. ‘You’re coming along to Monday night’s recording session, right? Just roll on over, eight o’clock at the studios. I never record before evening time, the voice is more relaxed, no broken mirrors in the throat. You should talk to Nelson Riddle too, while you’re here, set up an interview. He’s the best, the greatest arranger in the world. He’s like a tranquilliser – calm, slightly aloof, never gets ruffled. One of the true greats,’ Frank said, ‘and they have their ways. With Billy May it’s like having a cold shower. He’s all pressure, but I don’t mind that. Too much time available equals not enough stimulus.’
He turned and pinned me with his dazzlingly blue gaze. ‘Joe’s gonna be busy; how’d you like to go on the sets of Manchurian Candidate? It’s a helluva film. I’m real excited about my Major Ben Marco character. I’ve been living that part, I can tell you, more than any other. I’m through filming now, just one scene left to do in New York, but Larry Harvey’s still on set. He’ll see you right.’ Frank tipped back his chair and called over his shoulder. ‘Hey, Larry, come meet these kids from London, Joe and Susannah Bryant. He’s a young stage actor and she’s one helluva chick, a real barn burner! I’m telling her she should look in on Manchurian, see what it’s all about.’
It was fixed up in no time. ‘It’ll be my pleasure,’ Laurence Harvey assured me. ‘I’ll send the Rolls to pick you up.’ He had a thin elegant face, high cheekbones; a voice that was like nectar, honeyed and liquidly mellow. He was immensely smooth, super-sophisticated – utterly, compellingly charming.
Mike Romanoff nudged my arm. ‘It’s a lilac Rolls,’ he whispered. ‘A gift from Larry’s friend, Joan.’
‘What’s a barn burner, Mike?’ I whispered back when I had a chance.
‘A broad who’s all polish and class,’ he replied, with his pitted, beat-up face creased in a grin. It cheered me up; I wasn’t so bourgeois out here, I thought, wishing Joe had heard.
I danced with Bob Hope, who held me very tight and swung me round the floor. I practically flew! Back at the table, baseball ruled. The New York Yankees were zapping the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Bob, who had a stake in the Cleveland Indians, seemed resigned.
‘I’m a loyal son of a bitch,’ he sighed. He was never at a loss for a quip. Someone blew a kiss to Gloria and he said solemnly, gazing deep into my eyes, ‘People who blow kisses are just hopelessly lazy.’
When his wife tutted at that, wagged a finger and took herself off to the loo, Frank wagged a finger at Bob and tutted in a mimicking way. ‘That’s one of Bob’s standard lines,’ Frank said, with a great big grin on his face. ‘You watch out for him, he’s a player, famous for it. And he thinks he can get away with anything. When Dolores caught him in bed with a broad once, he sat up and said, “It’s not me!”’
Bob kissed my hand. ‘Not true, don’t you believe a word of it. I just like making friends.’
Frank drank bourbon, Jack Daniel’s; he pressed others to have vodka stingers and jiggers of brandy, but stuck to his ‘Jack’s’. ‘Not too much water,’ he stressed. ‘Water rusts you.’ He smoked Lucky Strikes, courteously offered cigarettes, which he lit with his gold Dunhill lighter. He watched for empty glasses like a hawk and sprang forward with an ashtray the moment ash was about to fall. His manners were impeccable. There was more to him than an arresting directness and the incontestable blue of his eyes.
Laurence Harvey sent his Rolls for me as promised; it was as lilac as the blooms in spring. ‘You won’t see another like it,’ the elderly uniformed chauffeur assured me with pride, holding open the door. ‘It’s unique.’
By the time he returned me from a day on the sets of The Manchurian Candidate I’d watched Larry doing one of his terrifying scenes with Angela Lansbury. I’d mingled with dirt-smeared, sweaty, tin-hatted soldiers who chatted me up on a set that was a squalor of frying pans, bowls of eggs and fold-up chairs. I’d spied other sets littered with oriental lanterns and white wicker chairs, Korean extras lolling around. Press photographers had taken pictures, even of me. It was quite a day.
Next evening we were included in an invitation from Ella Fitzgerald, dinner at her home, just Sinatra, the Romanoffs and ourselves. Frank was coming alone; he’d been on his own at the star-studded party the night we arrived as well. Gloria said the Juliet Prowse phase of his life was over and he was travelling light – albeit dating Marilyn Monroe on and off, in a friendly way. She’d been in a low patch, having treatment, and he thought she needed looking after.
Driving to Ella Fitzgerald’s house on a balmy evening in Beverly Hills, everything seemed beyond dreams. The streets were wide and quiet – no one ever out walking, not a soul – and lined with lushly tree-screened properties that reeked of wealth and seclusion. I felt in a place as remote from everyday life as the Galapagos Islands. World news, events beyond California, hardly rated a mention in the local press. I thought of home for a minute, of my parents nervously minding Frankie, the cracked lino in my kitchen, the modelling jobs I was missing. Alicia too, as always, and whether Joe had called her, long-distance. He’d gone to the post, but was in touch with his agent, other people, and she had a husband, after all. Wouldn’t letters be on the risky side?
‘Nearly there,’ Gloria said, snapping me out of my momentary gloom. She’d told us that when Ella bought the house recently, on North Whittier Drive, an exclusive corner of swanky Beverly Hills, local residents had muttered their disapproval. I’d felt shocked and saddened that even stardom couldn’t transcend the boundaries, that discrimination and prejudice was ingrained. Frank, Gloria added, hadn’t held back in his disgust of local opinion.
I knew the strength of his feelings. Joe had just interviewed Jimmy Van Heusen, a favourite songwriter of Sinatra’s and great buddy. Jimmy had described Frank’s loathing of the segregationists, his wild fury at the slightest hint of racial intolerance. Respect for minority groups mattered to him, and he wasn’t afraid to challenge convention.
We were at Ella’s front gates. The house, which was like a Spanish hacienda, was floodlit, with a central fountain in a circular drive and exotic palm trees in a richly planted border. Arthur purred the car away and we went inside. The hall with its hexagonal floor tiles, curving staircase and splendid chandelier, had a feeling of space and friendliness. There was an open-plan living room and I loved the bright dining room too, with its blue hydrangeas in a handsome plantier and sliding glass doors that were wide open onto a walled patio with massed groups of pot-plants.
Ella was surprisingly shy and gentle, far from the image I’d formed from hearing her belt out ‘Mack the Knife’. Her hair was beautifully coiffed, curling upwards from her face and she was in a navy lace, sleeveless dress with long strings of pearls. She was big with smooth chunky arms, and her maid, who was dressed in black with a frilled white apron, was the same build; darker-skinned than Ella and with a similarly lovely shy smile.
The maid served the first course, seafood on a platter, then took off her apron and joined us at the oval mahogany table. She did the same during the other courses too, slipping her apron on and off with unhurried calm. Ella clearly wasn’t having her maid eating alone in the kitchen. It was original and endearing, although the small interruptions and general atmosphere of polite shyness, to which I certainly contributed, left Frank and the Romanoffs to make the running. Prompted by Joe they talked of Hollywood characters and moviemaking.
Henrietta, Joe’s society friend who’d introduced us to Frank and vouched for us, had arrived. We’d moved out of the Romanoffs’ guest room to make way for her and into a mini-apartment, more of a bedsit, on Sunset Strip. Funds were tight, but somehow we’d paid a month’s rental up front. The Strip was a bit of a disappointment. It bordered on the tacky, no longer oozing the gangster glamour of a Raymond Chandler thriller, nor was it quite as in favour with movie people as of old. We were halfway into the month, though, and off to San Francisco, Vegas and Palm Springs in a couple of weeks, whisked away on the magic carpet of El Dago’s inaugural flight – just as Frank had promised, with his typical spontaneity, within minutes of our meeting him at Henrietta’s flat. It still seemed unbelievable. I was learning fast, though, that he always followed through.
The first week on our own in the apartment had been almost like old times, Joe busy, being by his standards sweetness and light; taken over and stimulated by his brave unexpected project. A book on Sinatra and his music was quite a challenge. I was helping where I could, making notes, jogging Joe’s memory. We’d had a bit of sex too, at last, which had been a comfort, feeding into my cautious hopes of finding our wavelength once again.
But it hadn’t happened. Instead, we seemed now, after a second week, to have slipped into reverse. There were no more jokes and communication, no more lovemaking; any hope of building on a few precious days of closeness seemed dashed. Joe was in a bad place.
Was it the sex, my coy, naïve ineptitude? I found it hard to let go. I didn’t know what to do and the sense that anything we did was very basic and perfunctory, unlike what Joe and Alicia got up to, made me all the more uptight. I’d only had a single exploratory relationship before Joe, a shy tender lover whom he’d swatted away with ease. Joe had swept me up and proposed in weeks; he was all glamour and panache. An impresario fan of his had even insisted on giving us a full-scale society wedding at his home in Holland Park, the guests spilling out onto a huge balcony overlooking leafy communal gardens.
I longed for Joe to cover me with tingly kisses, arouse and gently educate me, but he didn’t think that way. He’d told me of one or two early involvements with older actresses, laughing about how predictable that had been, experienced women, though, obviously who’d known it all. I didn’t. I’d married at eighteen with no real clue, no more than one embarrassing sex lecture at school, but I’d absorbed enough from books and films to know I had a lot to learn. The theory was all very well, what I needed was the practical. I needed an expert, a man to give me orgasms at the least, teach me variations, how to enjoy finding ways and wiles of turning him on. Joe had never even tried.
And always Alicia loomed, inhibiting me still more with the fear of comparisons, relentless visions of that tangle of naked limbs in the pool changing-house, visions of Joe’s head where it never was with me . . .
‘Tell me what I should do, what excites you,’ I’d whispered one time.
‘Well, not that thing with your nails. Can’t you . . . Oh, forget it. What’s the point? Keep thinking of England,’ he’d muttered sarcastically, flinging himself off me and hunching his back.
He’d been drunk, tensed-up himself, but how long could I go on making excuses?
Yet Joe had been different on our first week in the apartment, fun, affectionate, amusing, charming. Why had he travelled backwards? He’d been awash with excitement and wonder, talking about the recording session, how the Sinatra magnetism had affected the entire orchestra. He’d explained in detail, painted pictures: Frank’s total involvement with a song, how he’d shudder, his face contorted into a snarl, his whole frame rocked, quivering, as he sang a key note or lingered on words like ‘November’ or ‘summer breeze’. Watching that sinewy body wrapped round the microphone had been an overwhelming experience, Joe said; it had left him as physically drained and exhausted as he imagined Frank must have been.
‘He was mesmeric, wifey. It was an experience I’ll never forget, the power of him, the assault on all my senses, standing there, somehow so forlorn and alone, gripping that mike with his chunky gold signet ring glinting in the spotlight.’
Bill Miller, Sinatra’s pianist, was called Suntan Charlie because his face was sombre and parchment pale. Joe recounted how he’d cracked up, along with them all, when Frank had said to the lady harpist, ‘Make like you’re killin’ time, baby. Like you’re likin’ it and want it to last longer.’
Yet even in the telling, even in those cheering, involving moments, I’d sensed Joe killing time himself. He was a restless spirit, not cut out for normal family life. He couldn’t handle it. I knew that at heart. Not for him a few hours of togetherness, snug in a cosy marital chrysalis; he couldn’t wait to break out and flex new wings. Joe needed lights, action, adulation – and booze.
We were seeing Henrietta that night, at Romanoff’s where a flow of fascinating people invariably gravitated to Gloria and Mike’s table.
‘You don’t say!’ they’d exclaim open-mouthed, as Joe regaled them with his quick wit and Englishisms. ‘No kidding?’
Joe had no business being bored and frustrated, I thought bitterly, no business being so vile to me. Plenty was happening – dinners, parties; Frank was giving a little supper party for Marilyn Monroe the following week and had told Joe we must come. It would be very casual, he’d said, just a few good mates. I was wild with excitement.
It was eleven in the morning. Joe hadn’t been up long, but the atmosphere was heavy already. He had his glass of vodka and tonic. He’d given up hiding the bottle.
I debated going out, leaving him to it, but where – to sit in a deli with a book?
‘Coffee?’ I asked, doggedly persevering. ‘I’ll nip out soon and get something for lunch. Then why don’t we go to see a flick? Quite sexy on a rainy day.’
Joe had his back to me; he was hunched over a rickety, spindly table, his makeshift desk, and stayed facing away. ‘Sexy? That’s a laugh. You go if you like. I’m busy elsewhere.’ He rose abruptly and felt under the blotter, pocketing an envelope hidden there, then strode out of the door, slamming it hard behind him.
I stood watching from the window, not bothering to stem the tears. I saw him pause by a mailbox on the sidewalk a moment, stare at the envelope, protecting it from the rain with his hand before he slipped it into the box and hailed a cab.
I was married, I told myself yet again. I had to make it work somehow.
That evening, Joe came back from wherever he’d been, more jokey and even-tempered. I felt picked-up too; the telephone had rung minutes after he’d left, a call from my London agent. If I found myself in New York, Sally, the booker, said, I must go to see the Ford Modeling Agency. Eileen Ford had been on the phone that morning, wanting to get me over, a reciprocal swap with one of her girls. ‘Why not stop off on the way home,’ Sally suggested, ‘and pay the Ford Agency a visit? Crazy not to while you’re there.’ Perhaps I would.
At dinner, over the filet mignon and strawberries Romanoff, zesty with orange, drenched in Cointreau, Henrietta was bouncy and friendly, taking snaps of everyone with her Box Brownie camera, jollying us all along. I felt better, squashed up in the cosy horseshoe bench seating, more able to cope. Late on in the evening, Frank arrived. He sat with us at the Romanoffs’ table, wisecracking as people came to pay court, flattering and sweet-talking his audience and stopping every female heart. He held the men’s attention, too. Those spellbinding blue eyes did it every time.
‘Hey, it’s David O!’ he said, as a well-built man of around sixty strode in.
Joe looked stunned and catching my eye, whispered impatiently, ‘You do know who that is, wifey? It’s David O. Selznick. He produced Gone With the Wind.’
Frank introduced us. David O had a powerful, slightly formidable face, dark crinkly hair, a large nose. He was a legend. Joe asked after his next film in reverential tones.
‘I’m out of it, young man. I’ll never make another. Hollywood has moved on. Your wife,’ he said suddenly, ‘is very beautiful. She has the classic look that everyone in the business is after; it’s not all Gina Lollobrigida and tits.’ Was I hearing right? I tingled with adrenaline, and my insides clenched tight as he carried on, talking directly to me: ‘You should have a screen test. I’ll fix it up. Call you, Gloria? I’ll do that.’
Only that morning I’d been in tears at the window of the hideously functional building on Sunset Strip, Joe dragging me down into a bog. I had a life, too. Was David O serious? Could I conceivably have a shred of acting ability in me – let alone be any good? If he followed through, a huge if – I had at least to give it a try. Life was built on dreams.
I said my stumbled thanks, heart sinking as I became conscious of Joe’s frozen smile. Only a wife could have picked it up, but I knew that phony beaming crust of old. It was a thick layer of ice, that smile – it needed to be, to contain the seething. Joe was boiling over inside, lethal fumes that would escape the moment we were alone. It was breakpoint. He didn’t want me doing any screen test. I felt wretched, wondering how he’d play it, determined to fight for the right to give it a go.
It was late. People were leaving, even Frank who was off to New York to film his last scene for Manchurian. Gloria and Mike were going with him, taking a mini-break from the restaurant. I sent signals to Joe, ignoring the hostile vibes, and he finally made a move.
Gloria drew me to one side during the goodbyes. ‘About that call you mentioned from your model agent,’ she said. ‘We have free use of a suite in the St Regis Hotel in New York and I wondered if you’d like to keep us company. It’s a reciprocal arrangement, no costs, so don’t worry on that score, and we’ll travel with Frank. It’s only for forty-eight hours, a quick in and out. Do come!’
How a day and a mood could turn; how things spun on a pin. Joe’s acid resentment over a screen test that had been restaurant chat, flattering but not remotely likely to happen, was put on hold. We had to pack a bag and be ready to roll by noon the next day.