Since you talk about Hollywood and the 1940s better than anyone I know, I have used your own words and phrases wherever I can. The gossip, opinions, and asides are all yours, of course!
Anyway, these are first drafts; nothing is set in stone. After you have checked the facts, and corrected my inevitable errors and any misunderstandings, let me have your thoughts and suggestions, and I will get moving on the final polish.
This is what I wrote about the conclusion of Ava’s first marriage:
It had been a civilized divorce as Hollywood divorces go. I’d taken Eddie Mannix’s advice that things might not go well for me at MGM if I tried to take Mickey to the cleaners. Well, he had been a damn sight blunter than that; Eddie had a way of giving it to you straight, but with a smile on his face that always had a hint of sympathy in it—if you looked hard enough, that is, and did what he wanted!
Even so, I liked the old gangster. I know he liked me, too. Not in the way some of the front-office suits liked new starlets—as a regular supply of pussy. I’m sure he gave the bedroom eye to some of the other girls but he played it straight with me. Being married to Mickey gave me certain privileges on the lot—like not being hit on by lecherous producers.
Anyway, Eddie kept his promise to find me a decent role if I took Mick back after I kicked him out of the house the time I found a lady’s hairpin in our bed, and discovered she’d been using my douche bag while I’d been in the hospital recovering from the operation on my inflamed appendix. Good old Eddie came up with the role in Ghosts on the Loose, for which I got my first screen credit. It was a nothing part in a rinky-dink movie but some things you don’t forget.
I kept my side of the bargain, too. I hadn’t demanded half of Mickey’s dough and property (“Mickey’s treasure,” as Louis Mayer called it), as I was entitled to do under California law. I settled for $25,000, a car—it was the Lincoln Continental that Henry Ford had given to Mick, but with the silver gift plate discreetly removed from the dashboard. I also kept a few nice pieces of jewelry, and the mink jacket Mickey had given me for my nineteenth birthday—and hadn’t taken back when he was in extremis with his bookies.
For those of you who like a touch of irony in their stories about movie stars, the dark blue suit I wore for the divorce hearing at the Los Angeles City Court was the one I got married in. I’d hardly had any wear out of it, and I was still a thrifty North Carolina gal at heart.
Thurmond Clarke was the judge—why the hell I should remember the name of the guy who divorced us but have forgotten the name of the preacher who joined us together I have no idea; Dr. May Romm would have had a field day with that one! She was the shrink Artie Shaw sent me to when he became concerned about my drinking. A fat lot of good that did me!
Anyway, I told the judge that Mickey didn’t want a home life, he stayed out at nights with the boys, he wasn’t attentive enough, da-de-da, de-da. I was careful what I said: nothing bad, nothing too damaging. Nothing the press could pounce on and make into a headline. I could feel Uncle Louis breathing down my neck, right?
The final decree came through on May 21, 1943. It couldn’t have been a sadder day for me because it was the day my mother died. My tears were for her, of course, although a few were shed for the end of my marriage, too.
Mickey called me as soon as he got his copy of the legal paperwork—and before he’d heard my news about Mama. He said, “Thanks for going easy on me in court, babe. I really appreciate that. So does Uncle Louis!”
“That’s okay, Mick,” I said lamely. I wasn’t expecting to be thanked. He sounded so humble. But neither was I prepared for what was coming next.
“Well, I hope it’s what you really want, kid! It’s not too late to change your mind, you know?” he said, reverting to his old bumptious, egotistical self. “I’ll be more than happy to take you back, kid. No questions asked!”
Normally, that would have got my rag. He probably knew it, too. But I was feeling low, and just for a moment, a nanosecond, on hearing his cocky, confident voice, I wondered if it really was what I wanted. We had both behaved badly and said appalling things but perhaps that just showed how much we cared for each other. We knew each other so well, we both knew where to strike without leaving a mark.
Anyway, I didn’t rise to the bait. I said, “I’ll probably miss the good times, Mick. I might even miss your lousy jokes.”
“So you’ll come back?” he said.
“Are you fucking crazy?” I said.
“We can still make a go of it,” he said. He was relentless.
“I don’t think so, Mick,” I said.
“We’re still great in bed together, aren’t we? Let’s give it another try, baby. I promise you won’t regret it.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Mick,” I said firmly, although he had a point about how good the sex still was between us. We hadn’t found a downside to it yet.
“Then how about a farewell fuck?” he said cheerfully.
“You’ve had all the fucking you’re going to get from me, Rooney,” I said. It was a nice try but I was determined not to let him laugh me into bed again.
“How about one for old times’ sake?” he tried again. He knew my weak spots, and there was nothing subtle in his approach. “How about dinner tonight, seven o’clock, the Vine Street Derby?” he said.
“I have other plans, Mick,” I told him. It was true, I was seeing Howard. Anyway, I knew Mick’s game. The Derby was a short walk from the American Legion Stadium where we used to go to the Friday night fights with his Irish Mafia pals—Pat O’Brien, Spencer Tracy, the Paddywhack crowd, Mick called them. Betty Grable and George Raft, they were another couple of Friday night regulars. I knew he was playing the nostalgia card.
“Get it into your head, Mick, those days are over. We’re finished. We blew it, honey,” I said, but I felt like shit saying it. In spite of his bravado, I knew how deeply he would feel the brutal finality of those words.
“I should have taught you how to shoot.” His voice was suddenly hoarse. “Then you could have shot me through the heart. It would have been far less painful,” he said.
“For both of us,” I told him.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I still loved him. I loved him even more than on the day we married. It sounds like a cliché when I say that now, but that was always the way it was with me and departing husbands: I just couldn’t help myself. It was as if I had a compulsion to punish myself for walking out on them. Well, Artie Shaw walked out on me, actually. He didn’t waste any time doing it either—that marriage had lasted just about a year when he called the cab on me—but I loved him just as much as I loved Mick and Frank at the end of those marriages.
“You were the perfect first husband, Mick Rooney,” I told him.
I meant it as a joke but it made me sad saying it. I remembered all the good times we’d had together. They came back to me with a clarity that was overwhelming: the first night we’d danced at the Cocoanut Grove, the time he’d run Captains Courageous and Boys Town back-to-back for me at MGM’s private screening room, after I told him I hadn’t seen either of them; the evening we’d dined at the White House with President Roosevelt on his sixtieth birthday, and watched him give one of his famous radio broadcasts to the nation; the first day I took Mick home to meet Mama in Raleigh—she’d been too sick to come to our wedding—and the fuss Mick made of her. She had such a good time. It was probably the best time of her life. The whole family was there, and all the neighbors came by; word had gotten around that Mickey Rooney was visiting.