able to see the city, not be right in the thick of it.
You were part of the club if Mike waved you into Romanoff’s without a reservation. I had seen him turn away millionaire oil barons, nouveau riche Valley residents, and New York society matrons by the dozen. Aspiring producers, new punk actors, hotshot directors – all were shown the door. Yet Gilbert and Mike were old pals, and at some point Gilbert had obviously helped His Imperial Highness out. Whenever we turned up, there was no problem.
‘Get a table for Mr Travers and Miss Noel. Snap to it, boys. Miss Noel, may I take your coat— Who, those sons of bitches? Fat fucks from Wyoming – get rid of them.’
Gilbert was always in a good mood at Mike’s. His old cronies were there, the rest of the original Rat Pack that had hung around Bogie when he was alive. A lot of people had deserted Gilbert when he came back to Hollywood after the war. It was the way of these things: they called him a hero, but the truth was he’d been out of pictures for five years, was heavier and older and things had changed. The audience had moved on, and Gilbert Travers’s brand of charming English gent wasn’t what American teenagers were looking for. I winced whenever we passed a billboard for
Jailhouse Rock.
Gilbert hated Elvis, with a passion that was almost violent.
As we sat down at a discreet banquette, an executive from the studio with whom I’d dealt on my last film,
The Boy Next Door
, passed behind us. ‘Great work on the
Life
magazine spread, Eve,’ he said. ‘Mr Baxter’s delighted they chose to run the feature about you.’
‘Two White Ladies.’ Gilbert flicked his hand to the waiter. ‘They’re lucky to have her,’ he told the executive. Then he gestured to one of the shots on the wall behind us, me arriving at Romanoff’s after the premiere for
Helen of Troy
the previous year in my white Grecian goddess gown, gold sandals, gold jewellery, real gold thread in my hair from the Welsh Valleys and spun into a beautiful diadem especially for me, reflecting my mother’s Welsh heritage. (Mummy was a vicar’s daughter from Berkhamsted, but the publicity department never allowed the facts to obscure a good story.) On one side of me stood Cliff Montrose, my co-star, and on the other, his arm around me, Joe Baxter. ‘Look at you, my dear,’ Gilbert said. ‘Many more such nights to come, I’m sure.’
His hand lightly pressed my arm, and I gazed up at him.
When the studio ‘suggested’ we go on a date together, I’d leapt for joy with excitement, but then demurred. It was well known in Hollywood that Gilbert Travers had a drinking problem. Margaret Heyer, his second wife, had left him and gone back to England three years ago;
Confidential
and
Photoplay
had still been full of it when I’d arrived here. He was a drunk; he beat her; she’d run out of the house naked, screaming, to be rescued by a zoologist who happened to be down on Wilshire Boulevard – which was a neat coincidence as Margaret Heyer’s latest film was about a young wife who goes to the Congo and falls in love with a zoologist. (The publicity machine at work again; Hollywood wasn’t ever that original in its ideas. Even I’d learned that, by then.)
But I thought about it some more and I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t help it. Gilbert had enlisted the day Great Britain went to war with Germany, had seen his friends killed, had caught dysentery and nearly died, and had come back to Hollywood to find film stars who’d never fought a day in their lives playing war heroes and lapping up the adulation of an admiring public. He never talked about the war to me, and after a few cock-eyed attempts to find out more, which he rebuffed angrily, I never asked him again. I understood, at least I thought I did. We both had secrets, things we weren’t to tell each other, and it was for the best.
The cocktails arrived and Gilbert lit our cigarettes. ‘Well, my dear,’ he said. ‘This is quite a
You were part of the club if Mike waved you into Romanoff’s without a reservation. I had seen him turn away millionaire oil barons, nouveau riche Valley residents, and New York society matrons by the dozen. Aspiring producers, new punk actors, hotshot directors – all were shown the door. Yet Gilbert and Mike were old pals, and at some point Gilbert had obviously helped His Imperial Highness out. Whenever we turned up, there was no problem.
‘Get a table for Mr Travers and Miss Noel. Snap to it, boys. Miss Noel, may I take your coat— Who, those sons of bitches? Fat fucks from Wyoming – get rid of them.’
Gilbert was always in a good mood at Mike’s. His old cronies were there, the rest of the original Rat Pack that had hung around Bogie when he was alive. A lot of people had deserted Gilbert when he came back to Hollywood after the war. It was the way of these things: they called him a hero, but the truth was he’d been out of pictures for five years, was heavier and older and things had changed. The audience had moved on, and Gilbert Travers’s brand of charming English gent wasn’t what American teenagers were looking for. I winced whenever we passed a billboard for
Jailhouse Rock.
Gilbert hated Elvis, with a passion that was almost violent.
As we sat down at a discreet banquette, an executive from the studio with whom I’d dealt on my last film,
The Boy Next Door
, passed behind us. ‘Great work on the
Life
magazine spread, Eve,’ he said. ‘Mr Baxter’s delighted they chose to run the feature about you.’
‘Two White Ladies.’ Gilbert flicked his hand to the waiter. ‘They’re lucky to have her,’ he told the executive. Then he gestured to one of the shots on the wall behind us, me arriving at Romanoff’s after the premiere for
Helen of Troy
the previous year in my white Grecian goddess gown, gold sandals, gold jewellery, real gold thread in my hair from the Welsh Valleys and spun into a beautiful diadem especially for me, reflecting my mother’s Welsh heritage. (Mummy was a vicar’s daughter from Berkhamsted, but the publicity department never allowed the facts to obscure a good story.) On one side of me stood Cliff Montrose, my co-star, and on the other, his arm around me, Joe Baxter. ‘Look at you, my dear,’ Gilbert said. ‘Many more such nights to come, I’m sure.’
His hand lightly pressed my arm, and I gazed up at him.
When the studio ‘suggested’ we go on a date together, I’d leapt for joy with excitement, but then demurred. It was well known in Hollywood that Gilbert Travers had a drinking problem. Margaret Heyer, his second wife, had left him and gone back to England three years ago;
Confidential
and
Photoplay
had still been full of it when I’d arrived here. He was a drunk; he beat her; she’d run out of the house naked, screaming, to be rescued by a zoologist who happened to be down on Wilshire Boulevard – which was a neat coincidence as Margaret Heyer’s latest film was about a young wife who goes to the Congo and falls in love with a zoologist. (The publicity machine at work again; Hollywood wasn’t ever that original in its ideas. Even I’d learned that, by then.)
But I thought about it some more and I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t help it. Gilbert had enlisted the day Great Britain went to war with Germany, had seen his friends killed, had caught dysentery and nearly died, and had come back to Hollywood to find film stars who’d never fought a day in their lives playing war heroes and lapping up the adulation of an admiring public. He never talked about the war to me, and after a few cock-eyed attempts to find out more, which he rebuffed angrily, I never asked him again. I understood, at least I thought I did. We both had secrets, things we weren’t to tell each other, and it was for the best.
The cocktails arrived and Gilbert lit our cigarettes. ‘Well, my dear,’ he said. ‘This is quite a
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