Читать книгу Goddess of Love Incarnate - Leslie Zemeckis - Страница 13

CHAPTER THREE

It was 1932. The three girls stood in the glassed-enclosed porch that ran along one side of the big rambling house. By spring the green jacaranda trees would explode in a generous veil of trumpet-shaped purple blossoms. Clusters of orange trees threw off heavy fragrance in the yard near the tall eucalyptus with gray bark peeling down the skinny trunks. The sweet and pungent scent mingled with the sharp smell of frost on this early morning.

The glass walls insulated the girls from the cold morning. Their heated breaths clung to the dusty glass. The house was surrounded by acres of sage and scrub oak and open land. The big rock that loomed nearby from which the area got its name—Eagle Rock—was just ten miles from the bustle of downtown Los Angeles yet seemed further in terms of sophistication. This was rural land with skinny horses roaming and coyotes howling after dark. At night the sky was lit by a canopy of stars, not by the klieg lights of Hollywood. According to fifteen-year-old Lili, it was the sticks.

Lili often took a bus from Pasadena to visit Barbara and Dardy and teach them ballet. She didn’t have many friends at school, preferring the company of her younger siblings, both long-legged, wide-cheeked, and dimpled like herself. In fact all three bore a striking resemblance to each other.

Barbara, ten, and Dardy, eight, stood behind their sister, their hands on a ballet bar that ran the length of the wall.

LILI STOOD IN FIRST POSITION. AT FIFTEEN, SHE WAS ALREADY HER FULL height of five nine and instructed the younger girls to follow her, ordering another set of pliés and jetés in a soft voice that would never change, never dominate, squeaky and high pitched, a startling Minnie Mouse sound. “No, no. Back straight, heels down, soften your wrists. Turn your feet out. Tuck your bottom under,” Lili ordered.³⁸

Ballerina Lili

Lili didn’t yet carry herself with the noble bearing she would become famous for. Taller than most boys, she slouched. Alice was constantly encouraging, “You look like a queen, stand like one.”³⁹

Lili was clearly the more experienced dancer, having taken ballet classes for years from Madame Henderson for $1 a week. Madame H. had taken a particular interest in the pretty girl. It was one of the only luxuries in a spartan childhood lacking many indulgences. The ballet lessons would prove to be prescient; it would be a skill that would bring her fame and fortune and set her apart in her future profession.

The girls acted like frisky young colts, skittish and exuberant in their youth, long-maned and carefree. Spoiled by Alice and Ian, the girls did as they chose. Barbara and Dardy would tear through the scrubby hills around Eagle Rock on their horses while Lili closeted herself inside, doing nothing more than reading her movie and fashion magazines while daydreaming of living a glamorous life. She thought about designing clothes. She loved beautiful things and would spend hours arranging her drawers of colorful ribbon and lace.

Lili’s beloved grandmother Alice

The girls wore pink satin toe shoes, a recent extravagance from Alice. Alice was always encouraging the girls, perhaps to make up for Idella’s lacerating tongue. Lili was no closer to Idella after learning the truth, nor would she ever be.

WITH HER HAND ON THE BARRE, DARDY, SEVEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN Lili, looked up at her with awe. As Idella’s last child she knew she was her least favorite. “I never remember her telling me she loved me.”⁴⁰ Idella had run out of patience by the time Dardy was born. Idella blatantly doted on the more beautiful Barbara, a mere fourteen months older.

Idella struggled with loads of laundry, limping through the house, dragging a leg that had been damaged. Bitter and ill-tempered, the once beautiful woman whose life hadn’t turned out as planned must have felt diminished in her family’s eyes. This wasn’t what she had wanted for herself. She didn’t know how to care for this big, chaotic family. “None of us liked her,” Dardy said. They adored Ian. He spoiled the children. He wouldn’t let them lift a finger to help clean or cook. “Not my daughters,” he would say. Neither Barbara nor Dardy would learn to cook or do much of anything domestic. But they were fearless on their horses. And that was more important than domesticity.

Barbara in Eagle Rock taking care of her horses

Ian had rescued a half dozen skinny nags from the glue factory. He could barely afford to feed them but offered them to Barbara and Dardy with the stipulation they were to groom, feed, and ride them daily. With no money for saddles, Ian taught the girls to ride bareback, clinging to the animals with the strength of their knees. Madly passionate about their horses, they became expert riders.

Lili wanted nothing to do with pets. She had no desire to tear around the countryside kicking up dust and dirt in her face, burning her fair skin under the hot sun. “She was the least athletic person I knew,” Dardy said.

FREQUENTLY LILI HOPPED BUSES AND STREETCARS TO DOWNTOWN Los Angeles. She loved nothing better than to spend hours in the palatial movie houses with hand-carved banisters, giant crystal chandeliers, thick red velvet curtains, plush seats, the lobby a sea of marble. She fell in love with movies—and theatres—when she had lived in Seattle. It was relief from worry as she sank into a darkened theatre. She was no longer a lonely and isolated girl. She was anything she imagined herself to be. Life on the silver screen was glamorous and she felt life should imitate the movies. It was everything Lili, sitting in a narrow bed in a cramped cottage on a quiet street, wanted.

Fifty years later she could recall in minute detail a scene in Shanghai Express starring Marlene Dietrich as Shanghai Lily (Lili’s future moniker, if not the exact spelling): A train steams slowly through a Chinese slum. As with so many others at the time, movies and the stars were a heavy influence.

In the 1930s Greta Garbo was “the biggest money making machine” and at the height of her fame.⁴¹ Lili became fascinated by Garbo. She wanted not only to look like her but also to seduce men as her characters often did. She had seen Mata Hari repeatedly, swooning over the costumes. At the opening of Mata Hari in New York, mobs had caused near riots, with dozens of adoring fans hysterical over their idol. Lili loved Garbo’s sphinx-like expression, her mysterious manner and how it drove the men wild. From Garbo Lili learned the power behind being inscrutable. Everything was about cloaking, hiding, obscuring, protecting. She would invoke an alter ego when she went on the stage, most likely that of the actress.

John Gilbert, Garbo’s leading man on and off the screen, was dark, good-looking, and rugged. He would become the epitome of the type of man Lili would fall for.

Clark Gable was another Lili developed a crush on. Her type, but elegant. Paired with Harlow and Crawford and Lombard, Gable was the crystallization of Lili’s desires.

With her long dancer legs sprawled across her bed, Lili spent hours flicking through movie magazines. She tacked pictures of Garbo on the walls. She had begun her quest to reinvent herself.

A movie Lili would have enjoyed was Dinner at Eight starring that slinky Jean Harlow, who famously wore silky gowns that clung to her perfect body, leaving nothing to the imagination. She was laughter and light and beauty. In the film she plays Kitty, a gold digger with social aspirations to better herself by marrying a tycoon whom she is unfaithful to. Lili longed to be desirable enough to be a gold digger.⁴² Lili’s hair color would eventually match the star’s distinctive shade after she discovered a recipe on the back of a box of Lux soap flakes, which consisted of adding Clorox, peroxide, and ammonia.

In Pasadena Lili would walk down Colorado Boulevard to the library and sit for hours flipping through Photoplay. She loved fashion and would buy Vogue, reading it until the pages were worn. Her dream was to be on a “best dressed” list.

Lili had begun waitressing at a Chinese restaurant owned by a family named Fong. It was there Lili developed a lifelong love of Asian food (that and the fact that most burlesque theatres seemed to have a Chinese joint nearby for inexpensive meals between shows). Sundays she spent at the movies with the Fongs in Chinatown watching Charlie Chan movies. She claimed she searched for opium—but never found it. Maybe she had a romantic idea of what taking drugs was like.

Lili at fifteen

Having a job meant Lili soon quit school. She never regretted it, saying, “I wanted to have money to buy things.” She turned her nose up at attempting to learn “a lot of dates in history.”⁴³ She was more interested in making history.

While at the restaurant Lili was “discovered” by a photographer named Jack Powell, a local Pasadena resident who begged her to pose for professional photographs, promising it wouldn’t cost her a thing. Powell developed a crush on the tall skinny girl with the wide smile who served him pan-fried noodles. Lili loved the camera. She appears fearless in front of it.

LIKE MANY MODELS WHO MADE UP SCENARIOS IN THEIR HEADS TO get into the mood, Lili was adroit at make-believe. Draped in exotic fabrics Lili could let her imagination run rampant. Lili would have many insecurities about her looks but it never showed in pictures.⁴⁴

Lili and Jack could laugh over the awful photos of her with her head swathed in a striped bandana. They both hoped the pictures would lead to a modeling career. It did not, despite later claims she worked steady for two years. Her first disappointment.

If Lili showed the photos to her family, Idella would have made a snide remark, Alice would have exclaimed she looked beautiful, and Dardy and Barbara would have wanted their pictures taken too. Her entire life Lili freely gave out advice to family and friends about decorating, work, relationships. She would counsel Barbara and Dardy on how to get men to do things for them. She, after all, would become expert at it. Perhaps it had started with Jack Powell and his free photographs.

“DADDY DOESN’T FEEL WELL” BARBARA AND DARDY WOULD OFTEN whisper.⁴⁵ In his youth, Ian had fallen off a motorbike in Scotland and suffered migraines that over time would intensify in frequency and strength. When they struck, the girls were ushered outside. The house would be shuttered, and silence would blanket the normally boisterous household. The girls had to tiptoe when they were allowed back in. It was another accommodation of bad luck for the family.

No one had gotten over the horrible accident that Betty had suffered. In 1925, when Betty was six and still living in Minnesota, a reckless driver in a Model T hit the little girl while she played in the street. The running board sliced through her face, leaving her with an ugly scar from the top of her head across her nose, through her mouth, and down to her chin. Never as pretty as her sisters, Betty suffered both emotionally and physically. The sisters didn’t talk about Betty much. Dardy would refer to Betty only as the “smart” one. Betty and what happened to her would become a tale the family rewrote, oftentimes denying her very existence. She was never mentioned in any of the sisters’ later press.

A very rare photo taken by Jack Powell of a ravishing Lili