“So, instead of getting fifty dollars a week for the first year, it worked out at thirty-five. Out of that you always had to be well groomed and shell out for your food and a place to live. That’s why many of the starlets and contract players had to put out, plenty of them thought nothing of giving a little bit away when the rental was due,” she said.
She talked in a steady stream of recollection. She remembered the date—August 23, 1941—and the name of the MGM publicist—Milton Weiss—who met them at the train at Union Station and took them to the Plaza on Hollywood and Vine, which was known in those days as the Times Square of the West.
“Don’t get too comfortable, ladies,” Weiss told them. The studio would take care of the first week’s accommodations and meals at the hotel—after that they were on their own, he said cheerfully. He was full of good advice. The sooner they got themselves a used car the better, he said: Hollywood is a surprisingly big small town if you didn’t have your own wheels. Meanwhile, he gave her the details of the bus routes she would have to take to get to the studio each day. “Allow yourself at least ninety minutes, you have a couple of changes,” he said.
“That was fine. I didn’t mind that. When you’re young, it’s natural to be broke. I never had much money in my purse but it never worried me. I traveled in with the early-morning shift people, the cleaners, the stagehands, and maintenance people. They were a nice crowd. Even so, it was no fun getting up at 5 A.M. to get to work on time. But neither was being put on suspension. I didn’t mind not working, I never did mind that, but the fact that I wasn’t going to get a pay packet for twelve weeks of the year was a real body slam. Fortunately, Bappie got a job on the handbag counter at I. Magnin. I think the people at I. Miller in New York had recommended her. Bappie was a great saleswoman. That kept our heads above water. It also showed how smart Mama was, bless her. If she hadn’t insisted on Bappie coming with me to Hollywood, I’d have been fucked. I couldn’t have found my way to first base if Bappie hadn’t been around to hold my hand.”
Bappie’s wages allowed them to move into a tiny walk-up on Wilcox Avenue, south of Hollywood Boulevard. It was within ten minutes walking distance of the buzziest part of town, including Musso and Frank’s restaurant, and Don the Beachcomber’s, which was more famous for its drinks than its food; and an array of ornate movie palaces including the Egyptian, Grauman’s Chinese, and the Pantages, which turned movie premieres into an art form.
“That stretch of Hollywood Boulevard became our regular Saturday afternoon stroll. Every weekend we’d catch a movie, sometimes a couple. I remember seeing Random Harvest with Bappie’s favorite actor, Ronald Colman, and Mrs. Miniver with Greer Garson. God, that was before history, honey.
“Money was tight but I don’t ever remember going hungry. We had a two-ring gas cooker. We could always rassle up a meal. We shared a pull-down bed, but it was no great hardship. I’d shared beds for most of my life, sometimes with my sister Myra, but mostly with our black maid, Virginia. I’ll tell you, honey, when you’re sharing, there’s nothing to choose between a brass bed in North Carolina and a bed that pulls out of the wall in Southern California. But I was young and optimistic. I had no trouble sleeping anywhere in those days. That’s one of the best things about youth,” she said.
Ava talked about her first days in Hollywood. She described the Roman columns that stretched for over half a mile along the front of the MGM studios on Washington Boulevard. She remembered her amusement and disappointment when she discovered that they were made of plaster and wood, and not marble, as she had imagined, and her excitement at being introduced to Mickey Rooney on the set of Babes on Broadway. She was funny about the commissary, known as the “Lion’s Den,” with its huge mural of Louis B. Mayer—“his weasel eyes behind those round wire-frame glasses watched every spoonful you ate.”
Ava had been in Hollywood barely twenty-four hours and was being hauled around the studio by a publicist whose job it was to get her photographed with the stars. “It was a ritual all new contract players went through, and if the new girl was pretty enough and the star big enough, the pictures sometimes made the small town newspapers and occasionally even got into the Hollywood trades. Those fuckers never missed a trick. I’m told the photographs of my meeting with Mickey Rooney appeared in newspapers all over the world. But I still went on suspension after the first month!”
She’d talked for a long time. Suddenly she stopped and looked at me quizzically. “What’s the matter? The cat got your tongue, honey?” she said.
“I’m listening. It’s fascinating. You’re doing fine,” I said.
“You know I hate monologues, honey. My mouth gets dry,” she said.
It was after 8 P.M. I knew what she wanted. “Would you like a glass of water?” I said.
“Fuck you, baby,” she said.
I opened the bottle of red wine that was on the small table by her side. I didn’t mind her drinking when we worked. “I drink to remember, honey,” she often said, and to a point it seemed to work. I poured two glasses. “A Chilean Merlot with aromas of blackberries and a hint of vanilla,” I said facetiously, handing her the glass.
“As long as it’s wet, honey,” she said. She lifted her glass. “Prost, honey.”
“To you,” I said.
She tasted the wine, holding the glass to her lips with both hands. “That’s nice,” she said.
“Okay, here’s a question,” I said, getting back to business. “Can you recall your feelings when you met Mickey Rooney for the first time?”
“My feelings?” She looked at me as if I had asked her to reopen an old wound.
“Can you remember what he said, what you said?” I said speculatively.
She turned the question over in her mind for a minute or so, sipped her wine. “You know, it’s very odd, trying to remember how you felt about anything as a kid. I’ve read so many versions of my life when I first went to Hollywood. The bastards never get it quite right,” she said.
“Well, now’s the time to put the record straight,” I said.
She looked amused. “I can remember that first meeting with Mick very clearly—probably because he was wearing a bowl of fruit on his head. At least that’s what it looked like. He was playing this Carmen Miranda character—do you remember Carmen Miranda? You probably don’t. She had a brief fame in the forties. She was a Brazilian dancer, a hot little number while she lasted. Mickey was playing her, complete with false eyelashes, false boobs, his mouth smothered with lipstick.
“It was my first day in Hollywood. I was being hauled around the sets to be photographed with the stars. He came over to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Mickey Rooney.’ He did a little soft-shoe shuffle kind of dance, and bowed to me. God, I was embarrassed. I don’t think I said a word. I might have said ‘Hello’ or something. I was overwhelmed. His Andy Hardy pictures made the studio millions and cost peanuts. So did his Mickey and Judy [Garland] pictures. I wanted to ask for his autograph but I could barely open my mouth.”
Years later, she said, the psychoanalyst her second husband, Artie Shaw, made her go to, to try to find the cause of her drinking—“a fifty-minute session, six days a week on the couch, I felt like a character in a New Yorker cartoon”—had a theory about why she could hardly speak when she first met Rooney. “It might have been a bunch of bullshit, but it kind of made sense, too. Shall I tell you about the shrink? I know you hate me jumping around.”
“If we can stay with the Mickey story for the moment,” I said.
“You don’t like it when I wander, do you? But I’m more relaxed when I can say things directly from my thoughts,” she said.