Ed Ifkovic - Lone star

“No one flies to L.A. in July,” I mumbled as the driver opened the door of the limo and helped me in.

I heard someone laughing. “Edna, welcome to L.A.”

I’d just stepped off the eight-and-a-half-hour United Airlines flight from Idlewild. “I need a year to recover,” I muttered. I’d slept but a few fitful hours, fidgeted in my tight seat, and was happy to see the limo that Jack Warner had waiting for me. How insane to fly to the West Coast in summer. But business beckoned. After all, Warner Bros. Studio was filming Giant , my massive bestseller about Texas, and I was a co-producer. This was my baby, really, and when it comes to money, I cast a jaundiced eye on how others jostle my cash. And, though I was loath to admit it, the pulse and verve of Hollywood glamour excited me.

I smiled. “Tansi, honey, you’re a tonic after the abominable red eye, but even you can’t redeem California.”

Tansi Rowland gave a shrill laugh I assumed she’d acquired from years of living in L.A. She reached out and touched my arm. “You look tired, Edna. We’ll get you to the Ambassador and let you nap.”

I fell back against the soft cushions. “Lovely to see you, Tansi.”

Decades back, Tansi’s laugh was robust, a chubby girl’s rich contralto. Now it was thin and metallic. It had been over twenty years since we’d seen each other, of course. I narrowed my eyes. Tansi, a thin, wiry woman in her forties, seemed all nerve and hot wire. Where was the vivacious, bubbly twenty-year-old I knew in New York, the roly-poly girl with the apple-cheeks and the unruly hair? Tansi still spoke with a trace of her mother’s rich British accent, albeit now flattened by a lethal amalgam of deadened New York vowels and California linguistic breeziness.

I hugged her. “Your mother says hello.”

Tansi frowned. Her mother, of course, was one of my oldest friends and the legendary Broadway actress, Bea Pritchard, transported from the London stage in the twenties and the short-lived wife of Wall Street financier Howard Rowland-one of her many moneyed marriages. Tansi, an only child who trailed after her mother from one brownstone to the next, had never married and often seemed embarrassed by her mother’s public-house risque manner. She’d drifted to Hollywood after overachieving at Barnard, but not to be an actress-she had a healthy distrust of performers, given her view of her mother’s bedroom. She was Jack Warner’s assistant.

Tansi became all business. “Tonight you’ll be dining at Romanoff’s on Rodeo Drive. Very posh, Edna. With Henry Ginsburg, Jack Warner, and George Stevens-the trinity of Giant .” She grinned. “The giant trinity.”

“So the film is going fine?” I asked, unsure.

“Marvelous.” She sounded like a Warner publicist. “You’ll want to meet Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson.” She paused. “And James Dean.”

“The wunderkind ?”

“He’s a little unpredictable.” Again, that high-pitched laugh; a nervous sound. “He told me he’s scared of you.”

“What? I’ve never met him. Does he think I’ll bite his head off?” I shook my head. “I’ve been known to be a little tart-tongued and…and…”

“Withering?”

“Only with fools, my dear.”

“He’s afraid you’ll ask if he’s read Giant. ”

“And he hasn’t?”

“No, he refuses to.”

I clicked my tongue. “Then I’ll show him no mercy.”

“That’s what he’s afraid of.”

Both of us looked at each other. Only I was smiling.

***

That evening I dined at Romanoff’s with the battalion of men who were translating my Midas-touch brainchild into film epic. They also seemed scared of me. I like that in a man. But, of course, Henry Ginsburg was an old friend, and, as such, he understood how to handle me-no servile deprecation, no fawning, and, best of all, a witty regard for my place in the world. A large, overflowing man, nattily attired in a pin-striped Brooks Brothers suit, with bland business tie, Ginsburg was a contrast to the wiry, compact Jack Warner with his Parisian gigolo sliver of a moustache; a tidy man in an expensive, though rumpled, suit. George Stevens cultivated a casual Hollywood demeanor, a beefy man with pitch-black hair swept back from his forehead, all open dress shirt and Bwana-of-the-jungle khaki. I had a lot invested in these three men. Hence my friendly trek westward: checking in on the troops.

But I was weary. Red-jacketed waiters swooped down on me when I took a sip of water, and Mike Romanoff, the self-styled prince with the blustery manner, insisted on shaking my hand. Flashbulbs blinded me. Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, seated nearby, waved. I waved back. Sleep, I thought. I want sleep. My afternoon nap (a rarity for me, since I consider such indulgence a sign of weakness) had been unpleasant, disturbed by noises from the hallway. A girl’s flirtatious note, a man’s throaty roar.

So I thanked the three men, announced that I’d gladly view the dailies in the morning, and was escorted to the hotel and to my suite-too many rooms for one old lady. As I readied for bed, I stared down onto Wilshire Boulevard, then found myself gazing at the enormous vase of lush, perfumed yellow roses I’d discovered when I’d checked in. Already the petals were falling onto the floor. In California nothing stays intact for very long.

The next morning, Tansi greeted me in the lobby and led me to the studio car. A good nine hours of blissful rest behind me, I felt ready to tackle the day. Tansi was in a spirited mood, and I recalled a carefree walk through Central Park with a giddy sixteen-year-old Tansi and her regal mother-a woman who became furious when a passerby asked me for an autograph and not her. Now, all these years later, Tansi had metamorphosed into an assured self. You saw a woman with a drab flat face and a thin body, with conservative flared white-linen skirt and tame Peter-Pan collared blue blouse, her abundantly permed hair pulled back into a Gibson girl pompadour. All this was offset by bright scarlet lipstick and glistening red nails. A marvelous contradiction, really. Well, I thought, an actress’ daughter-the one who ran away to Hollywood to escape the imperial Bea. No mother to guide her, as they said in Victorian novels.

Tansi confided, “Everyone at the studio is nervous about you looking at the dailies.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Think about it, Edna. Giant is your property. Hollywood is simply borrowing it, remaking it. What if you don’t like it?”

“I don’t expect I shall, truth to tell.”

Tansi, wide eyed: “Really?” The grin gone, she ran her tongue over glossy crimson lips.

“Because when I told Stevens that the script Ivan Moffat and that other fellow…”

“Fred Guiol.”

“I never can remember that name. It’s so…weak. Ghoulish. Very Vincent Price. Anyway, I informed them all that the script was illiterate.”

“So I recall.”

“As it was,” I said, sharply. “But when those boys learned to listen to my book they got better.” I paused, thinking of changes to my plot, particularly the reinvention of the relationship of the spinster Luz and Jett Rink. That had not pleased me.

I tucked my hands into my lap, waited. I felt warm in the rose-colored cotton dress with the cinch belt, bought especially for this first day at the Burbank studio. But we just sat there. Impatient: “Tansi, dear, is there a reason the car isn’t moving? Do I have to fork over a dollar for gas?”