“Anyway, we had a good session yesterday,” I told her.
“That’s because I trust you,” she said. “I do, you know?”
I said I hoped so, although I suspected it was her way of apologizing for what she had said earlier. Yesterday’s session was good because she had said something important about herself. She had seen her faults, and her sense of guilt as she prepared to leave home, knowing that her mother was dying, was genuinely touching.
“You convey your feelings very well, Ava,” I said.
“These interviews are difficult for me, honey. I have to think very hard before I can find a sentence that will say even a little bit of what I feel. I’m not good at answering questions. I don’t want to give you a hard time. The truth is, I hate being fucking interrogated,” she said.
Interrogated? I thought I’d treated her with kid gloves. After all, we both wanted the same thing: a good book, as quickly as possible. I thought that was the best way to get it. “I didn’t mean to grill you. I apologize,” I said.
“I have to choose my words carefully when you keep asking me questions. I’ve been tripped up so many times by reporters,” she said.
“I have to ask questions, Ava. I don’t want to trip you up. We’re on the same side, for God’s sake.”
“I know we are, honey. I know you have a job to do. I know you want to do it and never have to put up with me again. I know I can be a bitch sometimes. Most fucking times. But I prefer it when we can just chat. Conversations are more fun. Anyway, I’m happy you think yesterday’s session worked out. I’m pleased we did it. I’m pleased it’s over and out of the way. I do want this book to work for both of us,” she said.
Her moods came and went all the time and I was pleased that she seemed keen to get on with the book again. Nevertheless, I decided to avoid the contentious area of her early days in Hollywood and Mr. Rooney. At least for the moment.
“Maybe, if you could explain—” I began.
“I can only tell you what happened, honey,” she interrupted at once. “I leave the explanations to you.”
I felt she’d pushed me away again but she laughed. “You have to earn your crust sometimes, honey,” she said.
“I’m doing my best, Ava.”
“I feel relaxed with you, honey.” She really did trust me, she said. “It’s just that you’re not what I’d expected.”
What did she expect? I took the bull by the horns. “Is Spoli still saying you shouldn’t trust me?”
“She’s never said that. She says I shouldn’t trust journalists. You’re not a journalist, are you honey?” she said in mock alarm.
“Once a journalist,” I said.
She smiled. “Spoli doesn’t think I should do a book—with you or anyone else. Books are dangerous, she says. She does like you, by the way.”
“And I like her, too, Ava. But she can be a pain in the backside sometimes.”
“She frets you will persuade me to say things I shouldn’t say… when I drink too much.”
“I know that. She told me.”
“She thinks a book, any kind of book, will hurt me.”
“I think she’s wrong. Her husband is Paul Mills. Need I say more?” Paul Mills ran MGM’s publicity in Europe for years on the basis that all publicity was bad publicity. “He is the most cautious publicist I ever met. He thinks it rather vulgar if stars see their names in newspapers,” I said.
That made her smile. “I like Paul,” she said.
“I know you do. And so do I. But you do see my point? They are both paranoid about publicity,” I said.
“People write all kinds of shit about me. They misinterpret everything I say. Nobody knows what is true and what is false about me anymore. I’m not sure that I know myself anymore. Anyway, I’ve come to the realization that all journalists are cunts,” she said.
It seemed as if she was about to put me back in the “baby” class.
“Are you still trying to pick a fight with me?” I said.
“Of course, I am,” she said. “Fighting’s fun.”
The bottle of wine was almost finished. I should have said, Fine, if she wanted to back out she should tell me now. But I was in too deep for such gentlemanly gestures. And I really wanted to do the book.
“This will be your book, written by you, Ava! I promise you,” I said.
“You will still be carrying the ball, honey. You will always have an input,” she said. “I will have to watch you, honey.”
“Ava, I want a good book, an honest book, a book that will set the record straight, and make us both a lot of money. What’s wrong with that?”
She thought about it for a moment. “And you think the truth will set me free?” she said.
I laughed, she could always make me laugh, and she laughed, too.
“Okay, no more talk of casualties in the mess, gentlemen,” she said. It was a phrase she had picked up from Papa Hemingway. It was the line he used when he wanted to end an argument, or bury the hatchet.
“Let’s just get on with it, honey. Before I change my goddamn mind again. I think we should open the other bottle, don’t you?” she said.
To my astonishment, she started talking about her journey to Los Angeles in 1941, her first days at MGM. And her meeting with Mickey Rooney.
11
The journey from New York to Los Angeles took four days and three nights, coast to coast. It was maybe the most exciting journey she had ever made in her life, Ava told me. It was definitely the longest. Accompanied by Bappie, she took the Twentieth Century Limited to Chicago, and picked up the Santa Fe Super Chief to the West Coast. Old Hollywood hands usually left the train at Pasadena—to avoid the fans, or the writs, or irate spouses at Union Station. “Only that was a trick I still had to learn,” she said.
In New York, they were met at Grand Central Terminal by a young man from MGM with their tickets, twenty-five dollars pocket money for the train journey, and a copy of Ava’s executed contract. “Here’s something for you to read on the journey, but better take a couple of aspirins first,” he said.
It was the standard deal but it was the first time she’d taken a good look at it. “That’s how goddamn naive I was. Bappie went through it with a fine-tooth comb, not that that did any good: the deal was done! I was to be paid fifty dollars a week for seven years—except it never was fifty dollars, and it never was for seven years either. The studio had the option to let me go after the first three months. If I didn’t measure up in the first quarter, after they’d had a good look at me, I’d be out on my ass. After that, they could get rid of me at regular six-month intervals. That took some of the wind out of my sails,” she said.
The standard contract was a one-way bet for the studio. The small print was full of surprises and traps for the unwary. A “morals clause” demanded that Ava promise “to conduct herself with due regard to public conventions and morals,” and that she would not “do or commit any act or thing that will degrade her in society, or bring her into public hatred, contempt, scorn or ridicule, that will tend to shock, insult, or offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency, or prejudice the producer or the motion picture industry in general.”
The morals clause didn’t bother Ava. “I was eighteen years old. I was still a virgin. I wasn’t planning to perform a sex act with Clark Gable singing ‘God Bless America’ in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. What shocked me was the fact that they were entitled to use a twelve-week layoff each year—and you can bet your boots, the bastards would make sure they always did, and they always did.