Copyright
William Collins
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020
Copyright © Paula Byrne 2020
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Paula Byrne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008307097
Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008270568
Version: 2020-11-28
Dedication
For Christine Marie
A sister is both your mirror – and your opposite
Elizabeth Fishel
Epigraphs
Mirrors from Lohr were so elaborately worked that they were accorded the reputation of always speaking the truth and became a favourite gift at European crown and aristocratic courts. Uniquely, the mirrors also talked, in aphorisms like one that reads in the upper corner of a frame: Elle brille à la lumière (She is such a beauty).
Karlheinz Bartels, Schneewittchen: zur Fabulologie des Spessarts (Lohr am Main, 2012)
I don’t remember who started the rumor that Mars was scheduled to collide with the Earth that summer of 1938 … the next summer, not Mars, but a little man in Berlin changed the course of human history.
Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich by her Daughter (New York, 1993)
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraphs
Prologue
The Devil is a Woman
Someday I’ll Find You
The Scarlet Empress
I Like America
The Garden of Allah
Sigh No More
Stage Fright
This Time Tomorrow
The Lady is Willing
Bonne Nuit, Merci
The Little Napoleon
The Party’s Going with a Swing
The Woman One Longs For
Farewell Song
Manpower
Song of Songs
I’m Old Fashioned
Follow the Boys
Poor Lady in the Throes of Love
A Modern Dubarry
There are Bad Times Just Around the Corner
Desire
You’re the Top
I Loved a Soldier
World Weary
A Foreign Affair
The Stately Homes of England
The Ship of Lost Souls
I Wonder What Happened to Him?
The Spoilers
Down with the Whole Damn Lot
I Kiss your Hand, Madam
Love a Little
Angel
Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans
I Am a Camera
Cowardy Custard
Around the World in 80 Days
This is a Changing World
No Highway in the Sky
Top of the Morning
Leap into Life
Twentieth Century Blues
The Big Bluff
Wait a Bit, Joe
Man by the Roadside
When My Ship Comes Home
The Imaginary Baron
When We Were Girls Together
Heads Up, Charley
Ace of Clubs
Touch of Evil
Let’s Do It
Madame Doesn’t Want Children
Bitter Sweet
Knight without Armour
Sail Away
Why Cry at Parting?
Why Must the Show Go On?
The Imaginary Baron
Dearest Love
Black Fox
Don’t Put your Daughter on the Stage
Art of Love
Nevermore
No Highway in the Sky
How Do You Do, Middle Age
Nights of Love
Pageant
Golden Earrings
London at Night
In the Shadow of Happiness
On With the Dance
Dishonored
Tonight is Ours
I Lift up My Lamp
The Party’s Over Now
Rancho Notorious
There’s a Younger Generation
Show Business at War
We Were Dancing
The Happy Mother
The Dream is Over
Kismet
Suite in Three Keys
Princess Ololah
Waiting in the Wings
Witness for the Prosecution
Kater Through the Looking Glass
Why Does Love Get in the Way?
The Tragedy of Love
I Travel Alone
I Wish You Love
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Just a Gigolo
You Were There
The Countess of Paris
Just Let Me Look at You
Paris When it Sizzles
Let’s Say Goodbye
The HMS Disgusting
The Blue Angel
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by Paula Byrne
About the Author
About the Publisher
Prologue
Berlin, 1993
Die Deutsche Kinemathek
My mother was still alive when the wall came down, but she made no comment except this: ‘I have cried all my tears for Germany. They have dried and I have washed my face.’ She had the loveliest face since Helen of Troy, but her beauty was in flight, like Nike of Samothrace.
She was finally being honoured. Berlin’s most famous and infamous child. I could never imagine her as a girl. She was a goddess; unknowable, unreachable. When I was a child I had a doll called Heidi. She was the most beautiful doll, with golden hair, and nobody could have loved her more than I. But every day, I prayed that I would never have a daughter. Dolls could not feel pain. Could not be hurt. I feared girl children. I would not know how to be a mother to such complex creatures.
And now the last box has been sent. As I enter the museum, I find myself in a mirrored lobby, like a jewel box. A hundred images of myself are reflected back at me. I am old now. I see an elegant, white-haired lady in a smart suit. There are eyes everywhere, and with a sudden burst of grief and clarity, I know how she must have felt. Every aspect, every angle of her life scrutinised, photographed, filmed, analysed and judged. Nowhere to escape, and nowhere to hide. And now I understand what she meant when she told me ‘Kater, I was photog
raphed to death.’
The Devil is a Woman
It’s funny how I can remember every single person who’s ever been kind to me.
When I look back now, I see so much, but I guess that’s the way it is for most people. I never knew my age in those days when we first went to Hollywood. That was because Mother constantly changed it, so I never had a chance to celebrate my birthday. To her friends and fans, I was a baby, to others, I was a young girl of nine, or maybe eight. All I knew was that I had the most beautiful mother in the world and that I was ugly.
My face was covered with pimples. Mother blamed the cream pastries I ate. It was one of the things I most loved about America: the food. For breakfast, the maid would bring me a stack of pancakes with maple syrup and whipped butter. There were strips of salty bacon ‘on the side’. American waffles with cream and blueberries. Gloriosky!
Mother glared at me, sipping water mixed with Epsom Salts. This was how she stayed pencil thin.
‘Sweetheart, hurry. The car is here. That Big Girl’s Blouse will be weeping into his coffee if I’m even five minutes late.’
Her co-star was English. Peter somebody. On the whole, she disliked Englishmen, ‘thick, white ankles, fingers like uncooked sausages’. She was obsessed by the beauty of her own slender ankles. ‘Aristocrats have thin ankles, only peasants have thick ones.’ She looked at my fat ankles, accusingly, as she said this.
I felt sorrow for my mother because she had given birth to such a plain child. I looked exactly like my father, but what was handsome in a man was plain in a female. In the mirrored dining table where we were eating a hurried breakfast I could see my reflection: high forehead, large flat nose, and deep-set eyes. My bushy eyebrows made me look perpetually cross. My hair was fine and a pale shade of ginger. I had blotchy brown freckles that I tried to scrub off with lemon juice. It never worked. But I had a lovely mouth, with a Cupid’s bow. It was the only feature that I had inherited from my mother. I decided then that it might be best to avoid mirrors.
As usual, it was an early-morning call. Mother was expected to be in Make-up at 5 a.m. Her car and driver were already outside the house. A hot Santa Ana wind had been blowing that week, and the Hollywood hills were sharp-edged and the colour of elephant skin. The morning air was cold, however, and I wrapped a warm rug around Mother’s legs. On the way to the studio, she talked non-stop: ‘It’s fine for stage actors, they’re the fortunate ones, they don’t have to be acting a love-scene at 9 a.m. after being in Make-up since 6 a.m.’
‘Any country that can make a dog a film star is not to be taken seriously.’
‘Harlow was at the dinner. That shows you the level of intelligence there last night!’
‘Abominable country, America.’
Mother was always edgy during pre-production. I listened and nodded and smiled and tried not to get carsick. I longed for the studio, and the hum of the carpenter’s saw. Only then would I know I was home.
She continued to complain that no drawings had been sent to her, and Nellie, her hairdresser, had not seen a single wig sketch. Von Goldberg, she knew, was still making adjustments to the script. What was everyone doing at Paramount? Hiding W. C. Fields’ gin bottles?
We drew up at the Bronson Gate. In those days – before the big earthquake – there was an elaborate stone belfry framing the famous archway. I nodded to the frieze of Shakespeare, who seemed to be presiding over the studio lot.
‘Good morning, Miss Madou. Good morning, Miss Kater.’
‘Harry, take me straight to Wardrobe. I need to speak to Travis.’
‘Yes, Miss Madou.’
That was the day I became my mother’s dresser.
Like most little girls, I thought my mother was perfect. Except my mother really was perfect. Everyone told me so, and she had the face and body to prove it. I guess that’s why I never told anybody the truth. Who would believe me? It’s strange how people refuse to think badly of the beautiful.
I remember the first time that my mother went to an airport full of ‘civilians’ – that is, not ‘Hollywood People’. She was horrified by the ugliness, the commonplace, the fleshy bodies. At the top of her voice, she exclaimed, to whoever cared to listen: ‘No wonder they pay us so much!’
In later years, when she had left the film industry, she was bemused by modern actresses, who relied on their talent and not their good looks to succeed. Not that she truly cared about her beauty; it was a commodity: ‘Glamour is what I sell. It’s my stock in trade.’ Mother liked her maxims: ‘Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful; I just know what to do with them.’ Another favourite: ‘The Possible we do immediately. The Impossible may take a little longer.’ And another: ‘Nothing bad can ever happen to you when you’re with your mother.’ But the one she liked best was this: ‘Kater, remember, the mirror never lies.’
Someday I’ll Find You
Here they come, podgy daughter trotting alongside her, little piggy on the way to market. They’ve buffed and polished me so that I’m ready for her. And I go wherever she is. They all need me, the stars and the starlets, but nobody loves me more than Madou. The feeling is mutual. My passion for her remains unimpaired. Even when she is tired, she is staggeringly beautiful. I live for the moments when she gazes into me, and we become one.
Madou is to play a Russian empress. Perhaps the most famous woman of all time: Catherine the Great. Mr Goldberg (everyone knows that he added the von to make himself appear noble) could not resist. And who can blame him, darlings? The transformation from vulgar tart to sovereign ruler is just too delicious.
Naturally, his star cannot envisage the role until she has first created the wardrobe. Every seed pearl, every sequin, every feather, has to be perfect. Travis, head of Wardrobe, a man of indescribable and imperishable charm, will set her right. Travis dresses impeccably, like an English gentleman, exuding elegant masculinity. He always looks as if he has just stepped off a yacht, so unlike that vulgar imposter, Mr Moses von Goldberg, who looks like a Jewish schmatta tailor. Never trust a man with short legs, I always say, his brain is too near his bottom.
Travis’s rooms are exquisite; book-lined and stuffed with antiques. I reside in the right-hand corner: a huge floor-length looking-glass, dotted with bulbous lights. The daughter never looks my way, studiously avoids my gaze. Well, who can blame her, when she looks like a baby porpoise?
Madou looks directly at me and speaks.
‘She must look young, Travis. But who will believe that Madou is virginal? You must overdo the image. We need frills and flounces for the early gowns. Then later, when she gets to Russia we will need pelts; sables, mink, ermine, white fox, not chinchilla. So vulgar, so Garbo.’
Travis chuckles: ‘Kater, dearest, have a sandwich. It’s an American standard, egg-on-white. Delicious.’
Madou casts a critical look at him. She dislikes other people feeding her child: ‘Now, where are the sketches? Kater, lay them on the floor, so we can see.’
Madou emits a sigh of appreciation as she scrutinises the gorgeous designs: ‘Travis, sweetheart, that black velvet gown trimmed with ermine is magnificent, but it must be bottle-green. You understand? It will film better. And the fur should be mink, the white of the ermine will make the trim too distracting against the dark material.’
‘Joan, my dear, are you absolutely sure about the dark green?’
Travis is one of the select few who is permitted to use her first name, just as she is one of the select few permitted to use Goldberg’s, which she shortens to Mo.
‘Of course I’m sure, sweetheart. You must remember how difficult black is to light well. The wedding dress is good. The antique silver lace is perfect, and the white seed pearls and diamonds. But the hoops should be wider. I need to check the width of the doors. Mo will need to make them bigger. The fur hat should not flop over the face, the face is important, Travis, not the hat. Kater, let’s go and ask Mo about t
he doors.’
Before she leaves, she turns to look at me, and there, reflected in me, is her image. Venus could not look more lovely. Joan Madou: you are the fairest of them all.
The Scarlet Empress
Oh boy, there it was. The familiar smell of sawdust lingering in the early-morning Californian air. And then I was whizzed through the soundstage door into freezing St Petersburg. Gee, it was busy; horses neighing, cameras being pushed around on wheels, carpenters moving planks, grips high above, on ladders and scaffolds, rigging lights into position. I could smell glue, spirit gum, and the disgusting smell of sticky, fake snow.
In the centre of the winter set was a beautiful ebony carriage, the royal coach. Its silver lanterns sparkled in the bright lights, and a team of eight black stallions strained against a heavy, ornate harness. Extras, dressed as Russian soldiers with resplendent black moustaches, sat around waiting or stroking their Siberian horses. I later learned that they were polo ponies, rented from the Riviera Club’s team, and given fake manes and tails, courtesy of Hairdressing. But, as Mother would say, why spoil the illusion with the bald truth?
When I first came to America, it was Mo who taught me my first important English words; Hair and Make-up, Wardrobe, Dressing Room Row, Soundstage, Grips. Mother insisted that we speak German at home, and even our maid was sent over from Berlin. One of the reasons Mother refused to let me go to school was because she didn’t want me to speak English with an American accent. But Mo understood that I needed to try to fit in a little, in this curious world of make-believe that is ‘Hollywood’.
Mother’s stand-in was at the door of the coach, wearing an imitation cape, made of brown squirrel, not the silver-tipped Russian sable that Mother had insisted upon. She kept up her joke about the head of the studio, and his origins as a furrier.
‘Sweetheart, he knows the cost of good fur. But I bet he never sewed on real sable.’
She chuckled, and there was a malicious glint in her eye. She loved it when she got one over on the studio bosses. They would be furious when they found out about the expensive sable. The thought was delicious to imagine: ‘But Mr Zukor, I thought you liked fur.’ Mother scanned the set for her director, until she found him astride a boom mic, like a witch on a broomstick.