Sidney Sheldon - A Stranger in the Mirror

He had become a superstar.

20

Hollywood was more exciting than Jill Castle had ever dreamed. She went on sightseeing tours and saw the outside of the stars’ homes. And she knew that one day she would have a beautiful home in Bel-Air or Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, Jill lived in an old roominghouse, an ugly two-story wooden structure that had been converted into an even uglier twelve-bedroom house with tiny bedrooms. Her room was inexpensive, which meant that she could stretch out the two hundred dollars she had saved up. The house was located on Bronson, a few minutes from Hollywood and Vine streets, the heart of Hollywood, and was convenient to the motion-picture studios.

There was another feature about the house that attracted Jill. There were a dozen roomers, and all of them were either trying to get into pictures, were working in pictures as extras or bit players or had retired from the Business. The old-timers floated around the house in yellowed robes and curlers, frayed suits and scuffed shoes that would no longer take a shine. The roomers looked used up, rather than old. There was a common living room with battered and sprung furniture where they all gathered in the evening to exchange gossip. Everyone gave Jill advice, most of it contradictory.

“The way to get into pictures, honey, is you find yourself an AD who likes you.” This from a sour-faced lady who had recently been fired from a television series.

“What’s an AD?” Jill asked.

“An assistant director.” In a tone that pitied Jill’s ignorance. “He’s the one who hires the supes.”

Jill was too embarrassed to ask what the “supes” were.

“If you want my advice, you’ll find yourself a horny casting director. An AD can only use you on his picture. A casting director can put you into everything .” This from a toothless woman who must have been in her eighties.

“Yeah? Most of them are fags.” A balding character actor.

“What’s the difference? I mean, if it gets one launched?” An intense, bespectacled young man who burned to be a writer.

“What about starting out as an extra?” Jill asked. “Central Casting—”

“Forget it. Central Casting’s books are closed. They won’t even register you unless you’re a specialty.”

“I’m—I’m sorry. What’s a specialty?”

“It’s like if you’re an amputee. That pays thirty-three fifty-eight instead of the regular twenty-one fifty. Or if you own dinner clothes or can ride a horse, you make twenty-eight thirty-three. If you know how to deal cards or handle the stick at a crap table, that’s twenty-eight thirty-three. If you can play football or baseball, that pays thirty-three fifty-eight—same as an amputee. If you ride a camel or an elephant, it’s fifty-five ninety-four. Take my advice, forget about being an extra. Go for a bit part.”

“I’m not sure what the difference is,” Jill confessed.

“A bit player’s got at least one line to say. Extras ain’t allowed to talk, except the omnies.”

“The what?”

“The omnies—the ones who make background noises.”

“First thing you gotta do is get yourself an agent.”

“How do I find one?”

“They’re listed in the Screen Actor . That’s the magazine the Screen Actors Guild puts out. I got a copy in my room. I’ll get it.”

They all looked through the list of agents with Jill, and finally narrowed it down to a dozen of the smaller ones. The consensus of opinion was that Jill would not have a chance at a large agency.

Armed with the list, Jill began to make the rounds. The first six agents would not even talk to her. She ran into the seventh as he was leaving his office.

“Excuse me,” Jill said. “I’m looking for an agent.”

He eyed her a moment and said, “Let’s see your portfolio.”

She stared at him blankly. “My what?”

“You must have just gotten off the bus. You can’t operate in this town without a book. Get some pictures taken. Different poses. Glamour stuff. Tits and ass.”

Jill found a photographer in Culver City near the David Selznick Studios, who did her portfolio for thirty-five dollars. She picked up the pictures a week later and was very pleased with them. She looked beautiful. All of her moods had been captured by the camera. She was pensive…angry…loving…sexy. The photographer had bound the pictures together in a book with looseleaf cellophane pages.

“At the front here,” he explained, “you put your acting credits.”

Credits . That was the next step.

By the end of the next two weeks, Jill had seen, or tried to see, every agent on her list. None of them was remotely interested. One of them told her, “You were in here yesterday, honey.”

She shook her head. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Well, she looked exactly like you. That’s the problem. You all look like Elizabeth Taylor or Lana Turner or Ava Gardner. If you were in any other town trying to get a job in any other business, everybody would grab you. You’re beautiful, you’re sexy-looking, and you’ve got a great figure. But in Hollywood, looks are a drug on the market. Beautiful girls come here from all over the world. They starred in their high school play or they won a beauty contest or their boyfriend told them they ought to be in pictures—and whammo! They flock here by the thousands, and they’re all the same girl. Believe me, honey, you were in here yesterday.”

The boarders helped Jill make a new list of agents. Their offices were smaller and the locations were in the cheap-rent district, but the results were the same.

“Come back when you’ve got some acting experience, kid. You’re a looker, and for all I know you could be the greatest thing since Garbo, but I can’t waste my time finding out. You go get yourself a screen credit and I’ll be your agent.”

“How can I get a screen credit if no one will give me a job?”

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s the problem. Lots of luck.”

There was only one agency left on Jill’s list, recommended by a girl she had sat next to at the Mayflower Coffee Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. The Dunning Agency was located in a small bungalow off La Cienega in a residential area. Jill had telephoned for an appointment, and a woman had told her to come in at six o’clock.

Jill found herself in a small office that had once been someone’s living room. There was an old scarred desk littered with papers, a fake-leather couch mended with white surgical tape and three rattan chairs scattered around the room. A tall, heavyset woman with a pockmarked face came out of another room and said, “Hello. Can I help you?”

“I’m Jill Castle. I have an appointment to see Mr. Dunning.”

“ Miss Dunning,” the woman said. “That’s me.”

“Oh,” said Jill, in surprise. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

The woman’s laugh was warm and friendly. “It doesn’t matter.”

But it does matter , Jill thought, filled with a sudden excitement. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before? A woman agent! Someone who had gone through all the traumas, someone who would understand what it was like for a young girl just starting out. She would be more sympathetic than any man could ever be.

“I see you brought your portfolio,” Miss Dunning was saying. “May I look at it?”

“Certainly,” Jill said. She handed it over.

The woman sat down, opened the portfolio and began to turn the pages, nodding approval. “The camera likes you.”

Jill did not know what to say. “Thank you.”

The agent studied the pictures of Jill in a bathing suit. “You’ve got a good figure. That’s important. Where you from?”

“Texas,” Jill said. “Odessa.”