Jonathan Santlofer - L.A. Noire - The Collected Stories

It was Betty Short who engaged K.K. in sparky repartee like Carole Lombard on the screen not Norma Jeane who bit her thumbnail smiling & blushing like a dimwit.

It was Betty Short who said yes maybe. Can’t promise but maybe, yes.

It was Norma Jeane who just giggled, and murmured something nobody could hear.

I was twenty then. I was so gorgeous, walking into the Top Hat—or the Canteen—or some drug store—every eye turned on me in the wild thought— Ohh is that Hedy Lamarr?

Norma Jeane said if she walked into some place eyes would flash on her and people would think— Ohh is that Jean Harlow?

Bullshit! Norma Jeane never was mistook for Jean Harlow, I can swear to it.

I was not jealous of Norma. In fact, Norma was like a sister to me. A true sister—she’d lend me clothes, money. Not like my bitch-sisters back in Medford, cut me out of their lives like I was dirt.

‘Cause I left home, & went to live in California. ‘Cause it was obvious to me, my destiny was in Hollywood not boring Medford.

‘Cause I wore black. Know why? Black is style.

When I was just seventeen, in Vallejo, before I’d even caught on about style —something wonderful happened to me.

You would be led to believe it was the first of many such honors culminating in an Academy Award Oscar for Best Actress…

It was the nicest surprise of my life. It was a surprise to change my life.

I had not even entered my own self in the competition but some guys I knew, at Camp Cooke, entered pictures they’d taken of me, when I was cashier at the PX there—all of the soldiers & their officers voted & when the ballots were counted of twelve girls entered it was ELIZABETH SHORT who had won the title CAMP CUTIE OF CAMP COOKE.

This was June 1941. Six & a half years yet to live. On my grave marker it would’ve been such a kindness to carve ELIZABETH SHORT 1924–1947 CAMP CUTIE OF CAMP COOKE 1941 but not a one of you selfish bastards remembered.

Looking through my camera lens sometimes I thought Betty Short was the one. Other times, I thought Norma Jeane Baker.

Betty was the dark-haired beauty— THE BLACK DAHLIA . Norma Jeane was THE WHITE ROSE to me—in secret—her skin like white-rose-petals & face like a china doll’s.

Betty had the “vivacious” personality—Norma Jeane was shy and withdrawn almost—you’d have to coax her out, to meet the camera lens.

Betty was all over you—it felt like her hands were on you—like she was about to crawl onto your lap and twine her arms around your neck and suck at your mouth like one of Dracula’s sisters.

Sometimes a man wants that. Sometimes not.

Norma Jeane was all quivery and whispery and holding-back even when she finally removed the smock I’d given her—to pose “nude” on the red velvet drapery. (You wouldn’t say “naked”—“naked” is like a corpse. “Nude” is art.) Like if you reached out to position Norma Jeane, just to touch her—she’d be shocked and recoil. Ohhh! Norma Jeane’s eyes widened, if I made a move toward her.

I’d just laugh— For Christ’s sake, Norma! Nobody’s going to rape you O.K.?

Fact is, I was afraid to touch THE WHITE ROSE —

you could see the raw pleading in her blue eyes—the orphan-child pleading—no love any man could give Norma would be enough.

& I did not want to love any of them—there is a terrible weakness in love like a sickness that could kill you—but not “K. Keinhardt”!

THE BLACK DAHLIA was a different matter. I would not ever have loved Betty Short—but feared being involved with her, so anxious too for a career —& if you were close to Betty you would smell just faintly the odor of her badly rotted teeth—her breath was “stale”—so she chewed spearmint gum & smoked & learned to smile with her lips pursed & closed—a hard knowing look in her eyes.

Fact is, I discovered Norma Jeane Baker— me .

Lots of guys would claim her—seeing she’d one day be “Marilyn Monroe”—but in 1945 at the Radioplane factory in Burbank, Norma Jeane was just a girl-worker in denim coveralls—eighteen—not even the prettiest girl at the factory but Norma had something—“photogenic”—nobody else had. I took her picture for Stars & Stripes —in those factory-girl coveralls seen from the front, the rear, the side—“to boost the morale of G.I.’s overseas. And the phone rang off the hook— Who’s the girl? She’s a humdinger.

See, I made her take off her wedding band for the shoot.

All the girlie mags— Swank, Peek, Yank, Sir! —wanted Norma Jeane for their covers. But she’d never do a nude— Ohhhh! Gosh I just c-can’t…

I knew she would, though. Just a matter of time—and needing money.

Young girls needing money to live and older guys with money—in L.A.—pretty good setup, eh? Always has been & always will be—that’s human nature & the foundation of Civilization.

Norma Jeane was younger than Betty Short and a lot less experienced—so you’d think. (Actually she’d been married to some jerk at age sixteen—then divorced when he left her to join the Merchant Marines.) Smaller than Betty and dreamy-eyed where Betty was sort of hard-staring and taking everything in with those dark-glassy eyes of hers all smudged in mascara—Norma Jeane was no more than a size two and her body perfectly proportioned—exquisite like something breakable. Betty Short’s pinups were sexy in a crude eye-catching way. Kind of sly, dirty-minded—like she’s winking at you. C’mon I know what you want big boy: do it! Norma Jeane’s pinups were sexy but angelic—her first nude photo “Miss Golden Dreams” I managed to coax out of her is the pin-up photo of all recorded history.

See, the trick was getting Norma to lie on the crinkly-crimson-velvet like she was a piece of candy—to be sucked.

Getting Norma to relax & to smile —like she had not a care in the world & wasn’t desperate for money & broken-hearted, her jerk of a husband had “left her.”

& wasn’t desperate, her movie career was stalled at zero.

Guess what I paid Norma Jeane? Fifty bucks.

I made nine hundred!—a record for me, at the time.

Later Norma would come back to me begging—she had not known what she was signing, the waiver I’d pushed at her that day—& I said it was out of my hands by then, the rights to “Miss Golden Dreams” had been bought by the calendar company & beyond that sold & sold & sold—millions of dollars for strangers to this very day.

Don’t argue with me, I told Norma—this is the foundation of Civilization.

What I never told the L.A. detectives—or anyone who came around to ask about Betty Short—was that—(yes I am regretful of this, & wouldn’t want it to get out publicly)—there was this guy, this “gentleman”-like character, called himself “Dr. Mortenson”—an “orthopedic surgeon”—I think that’s what he called himself.

The Bone Doctor he came to be, to me.

Not my fault—all I did was bring them together.

In fact it was Norma Jeane Dr. M. wanted to meet—not the other girls who came through my studio at that time & definitely not Betty Short who he thought was somewhat common—vulgar.

That’s how the Bone Doctor would talk: this prissy way like there’s a bad smell in the room.

Not the black-haired one—her chin is too wide for feminine beauty & she’s got a cross-eye.

The little blond girl. That one. SHE is the feminine beauty like an angel in heaven.