“OK,” EVELYN SAYS. “Are we ready?”
She is back in her seat. I am in my spot at the desk. Grace has brought us a tray with blueberry muffins, two white mugs, a carafe of coffee, and a stainless-steel creamer. I stand up, pour my coffee, add my cream, walk back to the desk, press record, and then say, “Yes, ready. Go for it. What happened next?”
Goddamn Don Adler
LITTLE WOMEN TURNED OUT TO be a carrot dangled in front of me. Because as soon as I became “Evelyn Hugo, Young Blonde,” Sunset had all sorts of movies they wanted me to do. Dumb sentimental comedy stuff.
I was OK with it for two reasons. One, I had no choice but to be all right with it because I didn’t hold the cards. And two, my star was rising. Fast.
The first movie they gave me to star in was Father and Daughter. We shot it in 1956. Ed Baker played my widowed father, and the two of us were falling in love with people at the same time. Him with his secretary, me with his apprentice.
During that time, Harry was really pushing for me to go out on a few dates with Brick Thomas.
Brick was a former child star and a matinee idol who honest-to-God thought he might be the messiah. Just standing next to him, I thought I might drown in the self-adoration cascading off him.
One Friday night, Brick and I met, with Harry and Gwendolyn Peters, a few blocks from Chasen’s. Gwen put me in a dress, hose, and heels. She put my hair in an updo. Brick showed up in dungarees and a T-shirt, and Gwen put him in a nice suit. We drove Harry’s brand-new crimson Cadillac Biarritz the half mile to the front door.
People were taking pictures of Brick and me before we even got out of the car. We were escorted to a circular booth, where the two of us packed ourselves in tight together. I ordered a Shirley Temple.
“How old are you, sweetheart?” Brick asked me.
“Eighteen,” I said.
“So I bet you had my picture up on your wall, huh?”
It took everything I had not to grab my drink and throw it right in his face. Instead, I smiled as politely as possible and said, “How’d you know?”
Photographers snapped shots as we sat together. We pretended not to see them, making it look as if we were laughing together, arm in arm.
An hour later, we were back with Harry and Gwendolyn, changing into our normal clothes.
Just before Brick and I said good-bye, he turned to me and smiled. “Gonna be a lot of rumors about you and me tomorrow,” he said.
“Sure are.”
“Let me know if you want to make ’em true.”
I should have kept quiet. I should have just smiled nicely. But instead, I said, “Don’t hold your breath.”
Brick looked at me and laughed and then waved good-bye, as if I hadn’t just insulted him.
“Can you believe that guy?” I said. Harry had already opened my door and was waiting for me to get into the car.
“That guy makes us a lot of money,” he said as I sat down.
Harry got in on the other side and turned the key in the ignition but didn’t start driving. Instead, he looked at me. “I’m not saying you should be dallying around too much with these actors you don’t like,” he said. “But it would do you some good, if you liked one, if things progressed past a photo op or two. The studio would like it. The fans would like it.”
Naively, I had thought I was done pretending to like the attention of every man I came across. “OK,” I said, rather petulantly. “I’ll try.”
And while I knew it was the best thing to do for my career, I grinned through my teeth on dates with Pete Greer and Bobby Donovan.
But then Harry set me up on a date with Don Adler, and I forgot why I would ever have resented the idea in the first place.
* * *
DON ADLER INVITED me out to Mocambo, without a doubt the hottest club in town, and he picked me up at my apartment.
I opened the door to see him in a nice suit, with a bouquet of lilies. He was just a few inches taller than me in my heels. Light brown hair, hazel eyes, square jaw, the kind of smile that, the moment you saw it, made you smile. It was the smile his mother had been famous for, now on a handsomer face.
“For you,” he said, just a bit shyly.
“Wow,” I said, taking them from him. “They’re gorgeous. Come in. Come in. I’ll put them in some water.”
I was wearing a boatneck sapphire-blue cocktail dress, my hair up in a chignon. I grabbed a vase from underneath the sink and turned the water on.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I said as Don stood in my kitchen, waiting for me.
“Well,” he said, “I wanted to. I’ve been hounding Harry to meet you for a while. So it was the least I could do to make you feel special.”