July 4, 1930
Adora blotted perspiration from her forehead and went to the other side of the pool to seek out a little shade. Candy and Em had insisted that she come, said it would be a good opportunity to "mingle with the magic-makers of Tinsel Town." But so far the only star she had seen was Rudy Vallee, playing tennis, and he was so far away she couldn't be sure it was him until she asked someone. The entire party seemed to be populated by hopefuls like herself, mostly young men and women preening for the cameras and trying desperately to get noticed.
For the fifth time that afternoon, Adora refused the drink offered to her by a white-coated waiter. Obviously no one in Hollywood had heard about Prohibition; everywhere she went, liquor flowed as freely as self-aggrandizement. To be honest, it had taken her quite some time to become inured to the sight of a woman with a cigarette in one hand and a highball in the other. And in trousers, some of them, swapping crude stories with the men as if they were born to it. If that's what it took to be a success in Hollywood, Adora despaired of ever realizing her dream.
She had lost count of the number of cattle calls she had attended in the past month and a half. Enormous, chaotic gatherings of hundreds, sometimes thousands of starry-eyed ingenues waiting to be discovered. Of those thousands, one or two lucky ones would be chosen, and more often than not their two seconds of fame would end up on the cutting room floor. The only hope for most of them was a bona fide miracle. And her father, she was certain, would say that God wasn't in the business of doling out miracles for lewd and immoral purposes.
Adora went to the bar and asked for a glass of water "on the rocks"—she had learned that much about drinking, anyway—and then turned back to survey the crowd. What would Letitia and the others think, she wondered, if they knew what Hollywood was really like? She had written letters, just as she had promised—one every week since she arrived. But one promise she had not kept. She had not been honest about the way things really were.
She hadn't lied, exactly—she had just put a positive spin on reality. Referred to the cattle calls as "auditions" and neglected to mention that there were hundreds of others "auditioning" for the same two-second spot in a crowd scene. She reported that Miss Mcllwain's boardinghouse was a nice, clean, respectable place to live, that she had made some good friends (though none who could ever take the place of her friends back home), and that she had some "promising possibilities" in the works.
The truth was, Adora's money was almost gone. Most mornings she was out of the house by six and didn't come home until well after seven, so she rarely got to take advantage of the meals she was paying for. She subsisted by sneaking coffee and sweet rolls from the tables set up for the real actors—a crime punishable by eviction from the lot if the studio ever caught her—and crashing parties like this one, where she wolfed down hors d'oeuvres and fruit salad and strawberries dipped in chocolate as if it were her last meal. As indeed it might be, if she didn't find something soon.
So far she had steadfastly avoided joining Candy and Em in their late-night carousing at the Westside Dance Club. They worked, certainly, serving the forbidden drinks and sometimes dancing with the customers. But more often than not, they came home with liquor on their breath and cigar smoke permeating their clothes, and once or twice Candy didn't come home at all. When she showed up the next day waving two fifty-dollar bills, Adora didn't dare ask what she had done to deserve that kind of tip. She knew, of course—or at least she suspected. She just wasn't ready to have her suspicions confirmed.
If nothing turned up for her in the next week or so, however, she might just have to abandon that last stronghold of morality and take the waitress's job at the Westside Club. She didn't want to; it represented some final capitulation to the seduction of Sin City. But what choice did she have? Her options were rapidly running out.
Adora felt a presence next to her and turned to see a devastatingly handsome man in a white summer suit lounging on the bar stool to her right. "Some party, isn't it?" he said languidly, his eyes running up and down as he surveyed her. He shifted his drink to his left hand and held out his right. "Whitman Hughes," he said in a low rumbling voice. "And you are—?"
"Adora—Adora Archer," she stammered. She stared at him and wondered what magazine cover he had stepped off of. Tall, at least six-two, and broad-shouldered, with wavy brown hair and dark eyes, a cleft in his chin, and a jaw that looked as if it had been chiseled from marble.
"Are—are you a movie star?" she asked stupidly. Great. Now he would think she was a complete idiot, some hick who just fell off the turnip truck.
To her surprise, however, he threw back his head and laughed heartily. "No, no," he said when he had regained his composure. "But aren't you the refreshing one? Most people in this town would drop dead in their tracks rather than say what they're really thinking."
"I'm sorry," Adora whispered.
"Don't be." He leaned forward and looked into her eyes. "I'm tired of women who play the game. You never know quite what you're getting." He extended a long brown finger and ran it tantalizingly up and down her arm. "And what, Adora Archer, is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
She took a deep breath and decided to opt for the truth—partly because he had already said he liked it, and partly because she didn't have the presence of mind to come up with a believable lie. "I'm trying to be an actress," she said frankly. "And my friends seemed to think I might meet someone here who would notice me."
"I noticed." He arched one thick eyebrow.
Adora could barely breathe, and her heart pounded painfully in her chest. She took a gulp of water and set her glass on the bar so he wouldn't see the shaking of her hand. "Mr. Hughes, I—"
"Whitman," he corrected. "My friends call me Whit." One hand reached out and captured hers. "And I would be deeply honored if you would consider me a friend."
"Why are you here?" Adora blurted out. She was intensely conscious of his fingers stroking hers, but she couldn't have drawn her hand back if her life had depended upon it.
"I'm here," he rumbled, "because I saw that the most beautiful woman at the party was sitting unescorted at the bar."
"No, I mean, what are you doing at the party?" Suddenly his words registered, and she faltered. "Beautiful? You think I'm beautiful?"
"I think you are the most exquisite creature I have ever seen. Hollywood is a town filled with beauties, but you, my dear, outshine them all." He smiled into her eyes. "As to why I'm here, at this party? Why, I think I was destined for it—just to meet you." He gave a low chuckle. "Besides, I really had no choice. This is my home. My party. It would have been rude of me not to be here."
Panic swept over Adora, and her heart sank. His house. His party. If she had been an invited guest, she would have recognized him. For all his flattering words, he had found her out. She was sure to be ejected on the spot. She just hoped he'd do it quietly, with a minimum of uproar. Maybe she could still salvage a little of her pride, avoid being seen—
"Clearly, you don't know who I am," he was saying, still with that infuriating smile playing about his lips. Why didn't he just throw her out and be done with it? But no, he seemed determined to toy with her like a cat with a baby bird.
"Forgive me, Mr. Hughes. My friends brought me; I don't know why I came. Maybe it was just for the food—a girl has to eat, after all. I'll leave right now, before—"
"Hold on!" He fastened a hand on her arm. "Who said anything about leaving?"
"But-but—" she stammered. "It's clear I don't belong here, and I'm sorry for crashing your party, and—"
"I don't care about that!" he snapped. "I've never seen half these people, and the other half are only here because they think they might get on my good side." He peered at her. "Are you really hungry?"
"I was," Adora murmured. Despite herself, she liked him. Maybe he wasn't going to throw her out after all. "But your buffet was very good." She opened her handbag and peeled back the edges of a linen napkin to reveal several croissants and a selection of canapes. "I—I took a few for later."
Whitman Hughes nearly fell off the bar stool laughing. He laughed until his handsome face turned red and his breathing came in short, shallow gasps. At last he righted himself, swiped the tears from his eyes, and took her hand. "Let's go inside, my dear," he said. "I think we need to have ourselves a private little talk."
For all Adora's experience with the social elite in western North Carolina, nothing she had ever seen, except perhaps the Biltmore, came close to Whitman Hughes's house. It was a low-slung, white stucco ranch home that seemed to go on forever. The kitchen rivaled anything she could have imagined in the finest restaurant, and on the back side of the house, far away from the outdoor swimming pool and the tennis courts and the incessant chatter of party guests, was a second indoor pool, flanked by bubbling fountains and palm trees. There they sat, at a small table adjacent to a statue of Neptune, and sipped orange juice from champagne flutes.
Whitman Hughes, Adora discovered, was a producer of some reputation in Hollywood. He had gotten in on the ground floor of the talkies and made a fortune when most of his colleagues were still debating about whether or not the idea of talking pictures was feasible. Now he was exploring another radical idea—a concept called Technicolor, which would bring the movies to life in a way that no one had ever seen before. George Eastman had first introduced color film a couple of years ago in New York, he said. It would take years to perfect it, but this process would bring lifelike color to the silver screen and would have an even greater impact on the industry than the death of silent films.
"I'm backing a new project right now that's about to go into production," he said. "It'll be bigger than Broadway Melody." He leaned forward and gave her a wink. "Even bigger than Mickey Mouse."
Adora sipped her juice and nodded. How on earth had she gotten here, sitting poolside with a great Hollywood producer—and a handsome one, at that?
"I only have one question for you, Adora Archer," he went on. "How much do you really want to be a star?"
Adora inhaled suddenly and sucked orange juice into her lungs. She began to cough uncontrollably until he got up and pounded on her back. At last she caught her breath. "What did you say?"
"I asked how committed you were to being an actress. And not just an actress, mind you—a star. A constellation in Hollywood's firmament."
"Of course I want it. That's why I came here."
"Are you willing to work hard—and do exactly what I tell you to do?"
"What are you saying, Mr.—ah, Whit?"
"I'm saying that if you want it, it's yours. The brass ring, the dream. The whole thing. Provided, of course, that you are as talented as you are beautiful."
"You're offering me a job?"
"Not a job." He shook his head. "The chance of a lifetime."
"What do I have to do?"
Whit laughed. "You have to be an actress, of course. You have to learn lines, follow directions. You have to put yourself aside and become the role. Can you do that?"
"I—I think so."
"No, don't think. Be positive, confident. Say, 'Yes, I can do it.'"
"Yes, I can do it," Adora repeated.
Whit got up and began to pace around the pool. "You'll be magnificent!
With that face, that voice—ah, the world will be at your feet. You will be my greatest discovery, my—" He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "My creation!"
He looked at his watch. "It's nearly six. Are you hungry?" Without waiting for an answer, he snapped his fingers and a white-gloved waiter appeared. "Put some dinner together for the two of us, Yates. A little pate, some of that cold chicken—" He paused and looked at Adora. "Do you like caviar?" She shrugged. "All right, it's time you learned to like it. Caviar, Yates. And champagne on ice."
"Oh, no," Adora protested, "I don't drink."
He cut a glance at her. "Please tell me I'm not going to get a speech about Prohibition."
"No, of—of course not," she stammered. "I just—"
"You'll love it. Guaranteed." He waved Yates away. "Now, let's get to work."
"Work? Now? Here?"
"No time like the present." Whit took her hand and led her back inside, to the den, where a large leather sofa faced the fireplace. He settled her in one corner of the couch and started pacing again. "The first thing we have to do is decide on your name."
"What's wrong with my name?"
"Not your first name. I love that—Adora. Sounds very sensual, very romantic. But we need a last name to complement it. Something equally romantic. Adora Love. No, that's too obvious. Adora Loveless. Nope. Sounds like a jilted bride. Adora . . . Adora . . . Lovell Perfect!" He slid to the sofa next to her and brought his face up close to hers. "Adora Lovell. What do you think?"
To be honest, Adora thought Archer was a perfectly good name, but she didn't say so. Besides, given her fathers disapproval of what she was doing, it might be better if she kept the Archer name out of it. It wasn't hiding, really. It wasn't deceptive. It was just. . . well, just the way things were in Hollywood.
"All right," she said.
"I knew you'd go for it."
Dinner arrived—an enormous spread of cold roasted chicken, pate, caviar, and fruit. Adora didn't like the caviar at all, but ate it anyway just to please her new benefactor. The rest of it, including the pate, was delicious. Whit mixed champagne into her orange juice to make what he called a mimosa, and she didn't even notice the champagne. By the time dinner was finished and the evening was over, she was growing accustomed to the taste of the champagne all by itself. The bubbles tickled her nose and created a wonderful fizzy warmth going down. She had to admit to a bit of lightheadedness, but surely that was from the excitement of the day, not the alcohol.
"Let's go out to the pool," he said when the last of the champagne was gone. "I have a surprise for you."
She followed him through the house and out to the patio, where guests were still milling around the bar and stuffing themselves at the buffet table. No one even seemed to notice that their host had been gone for hours.
"Attention, everyone!" Whit called out. He picked up a spoon and rapped it on the edge of a glass, and the crowd settled down. "I'd like to introduce all of you to my newest discovery, the young woman who, when my next picture is released, will be hailed as a genuine sensation. Ladies and gentlemen"—he pushed her forward—"may I present Hollywood's newest star, the most astonishing new actress ever to burst upon the scene. Miss Adora Lovell!"
Applause rippled through the crowd, and then, as if on command, a rocket launched from somewhere behind the trees, and a dazzling display of fireworks began. Whit ushered her to one of the deck chairs and drew his own chair up beside her. As the crowd oohed and aahed over the fireworks, he placed an arm around her and drew her close.
"When the fireworks are over, I'll send a car around to take you home," he whispered. "Then my driver will pick you up at seven in the morning." He nuzzled her neck and planted a fervent kiss on her ear. "You won't disappoint me, will you, Adora? I've got a lot riding on this. And so do you."
Somewhere in the depths of her champagne-fuzzed brain, a faint warning bell went off. The words sounded almost like a threat. But of course she must be wrong. Whit believed in her talent, enough to make her a star. This was her dream come true, the miracle she had hoped for, the big break most young actors never got.
It didn't matter that he had never seen her act. She would prove herself to him, prove that he hadn't made a mistake.
No matter what the cost.