Anne Girard - Platinum Doll

Harlean glanced up just in time to see the matinee idol pass right beside them. The spicy scent of his cologne lingered. “Jeez, he’s handsome! But not nearly as tall as he looks in the pictures.”

“That’s because directors have been known to stand him on a crate. I saw it for myself when I was an extra last year in a picture with him.”

Harlean wished she could order a drink with lunch to tame her open sense of awe and keep it from getting out of control. Her mother had taught her to have a love of gin, although hers was not Chuck’s great passion for it, certainly.

“Don’t look now,” Rosalie said. “But that’s William Powell sitting across from us. He was just in that picture called The Last Command. And I’m fairly sure that’s Greta Garbo and Irving Thalberg with him. Thalberg is a huge producer over at MGM, even though he looks like a kid.”

Harlean was certain that Powell was the most attractive man she had ever seen, far more so than on-screen. He had a thin, perfectly groomed mustache, a winning smile, and such strikingly bright blue eyes that she could not stop staring. There was something so debonair and sophisticated about him, not matched by any other Hollywood matinee idol.

When the waiter came to take their order, Harlean could only follow Rosalie by muttering, “I’ll have the same.” She had no idea what they had ordered, and she could not have cared less. She couldn’t quite believe she was actually here.

A few minutes later, the striking ingenue Joan Crawford was shown to a table nearby. Harlean would have recognized her anywhere for all of the magazine covers she had graced this past year. She was dressed casually in loose-fitting trousers and a cardigan. It was an easy style Harlean longed to emulate. Casual elegance, her mother called it. If she were a star like Crawford, she would dress just exactly like that. Though the idea of comparing herself, even privately, to a girl like Joan Crawford was slightly absurd.

Before today, her movie idols had seemed only fantasy beings. Yet here they were, real and wonderful, eating steak and salad, chattering away at lunch tables that looked just like hers. She was a part of it all.

After lunch, they went down to the Bullocks Wilshire department store, a luxury art deco palace. The display windows along Wilshire Boulevard were full of the latest styles from New York and Paris. Inside, Harlean found a temple to fashion, complete with travertine floors and crystal chandeliers. There were as many fashionably dressed sales clerks as customers, and more attitude than ambiance. She could hardly quell what she knew was her awestruck expression.

Rosalie led the way straight through the vaulted first floor Perfume Hall as though she absolutely belonged. Harlean hurried behind her, trying in vain to match Rosalie’s confident stride.

Upstairs in one of the showrooms, Rosalie selected two dresses from the mannequins and asked to see them modeled for her, as was the custom, since the store considered a clutter of hanging racks gauche.

She marveled at how Rosalie simply refused to be undone by the world, no matter the circumstance, and she understood now that her friend truly was the essence of an actress. She had promised yesterday that Harlean would see it, and she had delivered in spades.

“It would look great on you,” Harlean said to Rosalie as the model paraded before them in a belted celery-colored dress with a lace collar and cuffs.

“That’s an awfully expensive ensemble, my dear. Perhaps you would prefer to look at something a bit more...practical,” the middle-aged store clerk suggested.

Rosalie lifted her chin a fraction as she turned around to face the clerk. “I’m the least practical person you’ll ever meet. So, no, I don’t think so. I’ll take this one. And you can wrap up the other one, too.”

The woman’s mouth fell open. “My dear, have you any idea the cost of those two dresses?”

“Since I have a rich husband who loves to spoil me, no, actually I don’t,” Rosalie replied breezily. “You are all on commission here at this shop, I assume?”

Harlean watched the silver-haired woman’s demeanor change abruptly and her expression soften. “Why, yes, we are, but of course—”

“Then today I’ll be buying them from that sales clerk over there. And next time I decide to shop here, you would be wise to leave your attitude in the stockroom if you plan to wait on me, since I almost always buy something expensive, but not from someone with a chip on her shoulder.” She met the woman’s gaze unflinchingly as she tossed a business card onto the countertop. “Charge the dresses to my husband’s account and have them sent to my home.”

Both girls linked arms proudly once they had gotten a few feet away from the store outside. Harlean was fully realizing just how much she could learn from Rosalie, and she was duly impressed.

“You really are amazing,” Harlean said with a zeal she could no longer contain.

“Aw, thanks, honey, but it’s nothing you can’t pick up. No telling where a little ingenuity can take someone like you, too. You’ve got that something extra inside of you, I can tell.”

Harlean thought that it might just be true since she was quite adept at wrapping her mother and Grandpa Harlow around her finger with ease. In spite of their blustering threats, they both had eventually given in on the subject of Chuck. Her gaze, her pout and her ability to summon tears always won the day. Until now, Harlean hadn’t fully considered the power potential in that. It reminded her of what her mother always said about star quality: it was as elusive as it was indefinable. If you had it you had it, and if you didn’t there was nothing in the world that could change that. Perhaps Rosalie was right.

“You need to try it,” Rosalie said as they neared the car. “See what that smile of yours, and those brains, can bring you.”

Men stared at them both as they passed. Some nodded and smiled, another tipped the brim of his fedora.

“I’m not sure why I’d ever want to find out, since I’ve already got everything I want—Chuck, the new house, certainly plenty of beautiful clothes.”

“A little adventure, maybe? Nothing against my sweet Ivor, he’s swell, but I just can’t sit around the house all day baking cakes and waiting to have a baby. That’s why I audition. When I get a walk-on or a part, I feel like I did something all on my own—that somehow for just a moment, I stood out.”

Harlean looked over at her friend as they got in the car. “Chuck is enough adventure for me at the moment. Besides, I watched my mother try and try to get parts all over this town and all she ever got was rejection. You know the studios are absolutely crawling with gorgeous girls, one prettier than the next. For me, there wouldn’t really be any point in an adventure like that.”

“I see what you mean.” Rosalie paused for a moment, and then she said, “But do you think tomorrow you could drive me over to Fox to check the casting-call roster? Ivor needs the car again.”

“Sure. What else have I got to do?” But then she had an idea and suddenly she hopped out of the car.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m putting the top down. All of a sudden I feel like being a little crazy,” Harlean exclaimed with a carefree laugh. “To heck with my hair!”

Chapter Three

She had meant to stop and ask where to park but, to her shock that next day, with Rosalie beside her, the uniformed guard waved her car in past the imposing scrolled Fox Studios gates. He even had a smile for them as he tipped his navy blue cap.

“What the heck just happened?” Harlean gasped in amazement as she kept driving, afraid even to glance back.

“See what beauty and confidence will get you?”