“That’s also true with the actors and writers and directors,” Ruby said. “If a film does well with a certain paring, then the studio will try to reunite them for more movies. Like Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland for example—Warner Brothers put them together for Captain Blood and it made a boatload of money. So they figured, ‘This is great, these two are a sure thing,’ and they stuck them together again for The Charge of the Light Brigade. Whaddaya know, it’s the biggest movie of the year. Errol and Olivia did a couple of films apart, then they made The Adventures of Robin Hood. Instant smash again! The movie biz is all about surprising the audience a little bit, but mostly giving them what they want.”
“Like Clara and Lillie LaShay,” I said. “They made fifteen films together, if you count the shorts.”
“That’s right,” Ruby said. “Of course, it only works if the actors get along.”
“Did Clara and Lillie always get along?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” Ruby said. “They were best friends. I hardly ever saw them apart, until they started working on different movies. Even then, they always met for lunch if they could.”
“Do you think Lillie was upset? When Clara started making movies without her?” I said.
“Not that I ever noticed,” Ruby said. “There was one time I saw Clara crying about something. This was when we first started filming Arabian Nights. It was between scenes and Lillie had stopped by to see her. But Lillie had her arm around Clara, she was comforting her. So I never saw any resentment between them.”
“Hmm.” It fit with what I knew. Clara never complained about Lillie to me. “What does a movie like this make, Ruby? What’s the profit on something like Robin Hood or Arabian Nights?”
“I don’t know the profit exactly, once you take out all the expenses,” Ruby said. “But they gross about one to two million in America, and about the same again overseas.”
“That’s a lot of money,” I said.
“It sure is.”
“And it costs a lot to make a film like Arabian Nights.”
“A whole hell of a lot,” Ruby said fervently.
“So Paramount would have lost a bundle if they couldn’t replace Clara.”
“Well . . .” Ruby said, “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they have insurance on all the main actors. Especially for a movie this big. Mr. Heller got a pretty hefty payout when Clara was killed.” Ruby looked around to make sure no one was close. “I heard it was almost $100,000.”
“But the movie will make a lot more than that,” I mused.
“Sure, unless it’s a flop.” Ruby said, hastening to add, “But it won’t be!”
Did it make sense to kill your star to collect the insurance? Maybe it did, if you thought the movie was going to fail. Or maybe it did if the film was close enough to finished that you thought you could complete it either way.
Who did the payment go to exactly? Did it fall into the Paramount Pictures coffers, or could it be skimmed by an individual? Like Mr. Balaban, the current president, or maybe Mr. Heller himself?
I couldn’t follow that train of thought any further, because we’d arrived at a row of trailers. I could see various names on the doors as we passed: Gable, Blanche, O’Neil, Bloom.
They won’t have to change the nameplate for my trailer, I thought. Clara had never used a stage name.
“Who’s O’Neil?” I asked Ruby.
“He plays the Vizier,” Ruby said. “The villain in Arabian Nights. Trenton O’Neil is an old stage actor—he’s worked with Mr. DeMille for a long time. He writes scripts sometimes too.”
Ruby unlocked the door to the trailer with “Bloom” on the door.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’m going to grab Lucille and Freida.”
She returned a few minutes later with two women: Lucille Verranski, who had tinted red hair and a perfectly painted Cupid’s-bow mouth in a wide, creamy face, and Freida Kantor, who was tall and slim, rather beautiful in a severe way, with her unfashionably-long hair pinned up around her head like a crown.
Ruby explained that Lucille was a makeup artist, and Freida the head costume designer.
“What do you think?” Ruby asked the two women.
They examined me critically.
“We’ll have to cut her hair, and color it,” Lucille said.
“She’s taller,” Freida said. “But I can alter the costumes.”
“Let’s get to it, then,” Ruby said. “Mr. DeMille wants to start shooting her scenes by tomorrow.”
None of them asked my opinion on these alterations, but after all, it’s what I agreed to when I signed the contract with Mr. Heller.
Freida took my measurements first. She used a seamstress’s tape, which hung round her shoulders like a snake charmer’s pet. She wrapped the band around my chest, waist, hips, thighs, upper arms, even my calves, noting each measurement to the millimeter but not bothering to write any of it down, simply remembering each one.
“You’re bigger than your sister,” she said brusquely, removing the tape.
“Clara was always skinny,” I said, feeling guilty all the same. I had an athletic build, not the slim hourglass-figure that was currently popular.
“I know,” Freida said. “I’ve made costumes for your sister for three films.”
“Did you?” I asked, curiously. “Did you make the dresses Clara and Lillie LaShay wore in Rich Girl, Poor Girl?”
That was one of my favorite movies, not least because the gowns Clara had worn as the titular “rich girl” had been as colorful and fanciful as confectionary.
“I made Clara’s costumes,” Freida said. “Lillie makes her own. She doesn’t allow anyone else to dress her.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Anyway,” Lucille said, returning to the main point, “don’t worry about the difference in size. It won’t make much difference on film. You can make things look any way you like for a movie. Like if an actor’s not tall enough, we just have him stand on a box. Mae West had special shoes made, sort of a shoe on top of a shoe, ten inches high! From a distance they looked normal, she had them in all kinds of colors.”
“Maybe you’ll stand in a ditch,” Freida said.
I couldn’t tell if she was joking.
Freida hurried off to begin work on the costumes, and Lucille took me to an outdoor sink where she could color and rinse my hair. She had a barber’s chair with a mirrored vanity all set up, like a beauty parlor out in the California sunshine.
“Is it always like this?” I asked, looking up at the flawless blue sky, unmarked by a single cloud.
“Only three hundred days a year,” Lucille said with a laugh.
“That’s about two hundred more than Chicago,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great city. So much history and culture—I mean, by American standards. I guess in Europe they wouldn’t say a city had history unless it was a thousand years old.”
“Those thousand-year-old cities might not be standing much longer,” Lucille said somberly, as she mixed up the hair dye in a little dish. “I wish I would have visited Paris when I had the chance. Who knows how long it will be until I can go now. Or what will be there.”