Platinum Doll

Harlean huffed in response to being ganged up on. Faced with condescension, it ignited her fighting spirit. “What would you like to bet?” she asked Irene.

Katie and Rosalie exchanged a glance. “We were only teasing,” Rosalie said.

“You mentioned a bet, let’s bet.”

Even though Harlean was smiling she could tell that they all felt the shift in her tone.

“All right,” Irene cautiously replied. “What do you want if I’m wrong?”

She glanced up at the lovely pearl brooch attached to Irene’s collar. “How ’bout that?”

Mayer’s eyes widened just slightly. Beyond that, she hid her surprise well. “You’ll never go through with it, so sure. But the brooch it is. And if I’m right and you don’t find the nerve, one of those beautiful orchids, hand delivered by you to my doorstep once a month for a year.”

Harlean fought a smile. Irene didn’t know what a poor choice it was to bet against her. She wouldn’t really take personal jewelry even after she had won the wager, she wasn’t that cruel. But she might borrow it for a day or two just to make a point. One thing was sure, she reveled in the moment where Louis B. Mayer’s daughter couldn’t be quite sure.

After the evening was at an end, and the guests happily stumbled out to their cars, Ivor and Rosalie followed Chuck and Harlean back inside. Chuck had invited them to stay for a nightcap. At least that had been his proposal before he realized they were out of alcohol. As Harlean and Rosalie took stock in the kitchen, they found that every last morsel of food, and every drop of liquor, had been consumed.

“Man, those boys can drink,” Chuck sighed, turning over a bottle of wine left on the kitchen counter to see if there was even a drop left inside.

“We held our own,” Ivor returned with a snicker as he slung his arm fraternally over Chuck’s shoulder.

“You sure did,” Rosalie added. “You’re both more than a little drunk.”

“Aw, don’t be a spoilsport, Rosie. We were all just havin’ fun,” Ivor replied with a smile as he smacked a breezy kiss onto her cheek. “Besides, Chuck and I can’t have those boys thinking we can’t keep up.”

She frowned at him in response and pretended to wipe his kiss away but she did not try to conceal her real affection for him.

Harlean walked back into the living room to begin cleaning up, and Rosalie followed her. There were dirty dishes and glassware scattered everywhere. The pungent odor of cigarettes was strong.

“I can’t believe you started that whole thing,” Harlean said as she collected the plates and Rosalie gathered up the glasses.

“Started what?”

“The challenge.”

Rosalie bit back a smile. “I didn’t. Irene did. But obviously that was an opportunity not to be missed. Besides, it’d be worth it just to see the look on Katie DeMille’s face if you went through with it, since she claims to know Dave Allen so well.”

“You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?”

“I don’t know. Will you?”

“Chuck wouldn’t want me to, I know that. He always thought my mother had been foolish to try to break into Hollywood.”

“Well, he wouldn’t even have to know.”

Harlean took the plates back into the kitchen and set them on the counter. When she glanced through the window over the sink, she saw Chuck and Ivor on the patio now. They were looking up at the sky and talking. “You think I should lie to my husband?”

“It’s not like he always tells you the truth. Weren’t you just telling me you have no idea what he does all day when he leaves the house?”

“I assumed he was with Ivor.”

“Not all the time.”

“Chuck wouldn’t cheat on me.”

“Of course not, honey. Any fool can see he’s crazy about you. I only meant, even married people have their secrets. It keeps things fresh.”

She turned on the tap, feeling a sudden flare of anger and doubt. She was trying to learn from Rosalie but Harlean, who was still only seventeen, wasn’t as confident as she knew she could make herself appear, and she hated other people knowing it. Mother always said, Look confident, Baby, and you will be confident.

“What’s the point, anyway? It’s not like I actually want to be an actress.”

“There’s always a point to accepting a dare. Be bold, be daring!” Rosalie exclaimed, and her brown eyes glittered.

Outside, Chuck and Ivor laughed suddenly about something the girls couldn’t hear.

“They have their little secrets, we should have ours,” Rosalie declared.

“All right.”

“You’ll do it?”

“Why not?”

And that really was the point. Harlean couldn’t think of any good reason not to do it. She certainly didn’t have anything else interesting to do with her days. It was crazy, surely. But, who knew, maybe it would be fun. And it would be great to win a bet with Louis B. Mayer’s slightly condescending daughter, and shock the daughter of Cecil B. DeMille, both at the same time. But more than that, this might just be an occasion to see if a bit of Rosalie’s awe-inspiring self-confidence had rubbed off on her. Her proclaimed disdain for the Hollywood studio system was from her mother’s experience, her fear of what it did to young women belonged to Chuck. Having a secret for a while might just afford her the ability to challenge herself and, for the first time, decide on her own how she actually felt about it all.

Chapter Five

What are you staring at?

Harlean felt a spark of indignation as she parked outside the Central Casting office at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. More than a few people passing by gave her a double take. So the car was a bit flashy, and her white silk suit looked expensive, but all of the attention was unnerving. She was already starting to second-guess coming here. She clutched the key in a death grip as she emerged from the car. Her knees were weak. She should never have stooped to a bet like this. What was she thinking? That was precisely what she got for having had a drink last night.

She should have asked Rosalie to come with her for moral support. But pride had gotten the better of her last night. And the same way Rosalie wanted to see Katie DeMille’s face, Harlean now wanted to see Rosalie’s expression when she announced that she had gone through with the dare when no one believed she would. She wanted to show them that no one should ever underestimate her. Oh, yes, Harlean McGrew could be downright daring. Those girls were about to see that!

And above all, she meant to prove it to herself.

All she had to do was present the letter and wait to be rejected. Then she would take a business card to prove she had actually been there, and be on her way, the wager handily won. She was meeting her old friend Bobbe Brown for lunch afterward which would soothe the rejection. Bobbe was a girl she’d met years ago when she and her mother had lived here the last time, and they had maintained a correspondence ever since.

Harlean thought it would be fun to see someone who had known her before she’d gotten married, someone who remembered, and liked, the slightly pudgy, sometimes awkward Harlean Carpenter even though, like Chuck, Bobbe teased her in her letters about still being called the Baby at the age of seventeen. She was eager now to spend some time with a girl her age, one who hadn’t grown up so fast as the rest of her new crowd.

The secretary looked up from a notepad on her neatly arranged desk. Beside her was a row of chairs, each occupied by a very pretty girl. Many of them were blonde, though not as blonde as Harlean. Each had their long, slim legs crossed in the same direction.

On the wall behind them were posters for the hit films The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, and Lon Chaney looking suitably frightening in character as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She had seen both silent films with her mother in Kansas City, which reminded her, yet again, how far from home she really was.

“Yes?” the secretary said as she lifted her arched eyebrows a tick higher.

Harlean opened her mouth to reply but no words came out. She heard one of the girls in the row of chairs snicker in response to the sudden sound that came from the back of her throat. She drew the letter from her handbag and silently laid it down on the secretary’s desk. Scowling, the woman gave the missive a cursory glance. Then Harlean watched her eyes widen as she actually read the letter of introduction.

“Wait here,” she instructed as she went to knock on the door behind her desk and entered the office.

Harlean could feel the looks of contempt being shot at her as she stood waiting, her hands both tightly clutching her small handbag. It would be over soon enough, just a few more minutes, and she could be out the door and on the way to lunch where she and her old friend would have a good laugh about this.

“Mr. Allen will see you now. Go right in.”

The secretary’s expression had dramatically changed. For the first time, a glimmer of a smile turned up her carefully painted lips as she directed Harlean inside.

Dave Allen was surprisingly young, probably under thirty, with suntanned skin, bright hazel eyes and an engaging smile. He was not at all what Harlean had expected of the head of Central Casting. He stood and held out a hand to indicate a green leather chair opposite his desk. He was staring at her.

“Have a seat.”

“Thank you, Mr. Allen.”

“Dave, please. I’d feel ancient otherwise. And with whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?”

Harlean Carpenter, she nearly said but Mrs. Charles McGrew fought past it. Both names tangled in her mind then, dueling in that split second with the idea that she would have to explain being someone’s wife at such a young age.

What if they contacted him? This was all just a silly lark anyway—her momentary adventure.

“Jean Harlow,” she offhandedly replied, managing a smile. It completely surprised her that she had blurted it out, but her mother’s name would suit for now.

“That gaze of yours alone is worth a million bucks. You are different, just like the letter says.”

“Thank you...” she tipped her head to the side and held her smile “...I think.”

“Just calling it like I see it, Miss Harlow. That’s my job. We’ll want to get you registered right away. Eleanor, my secretary, will get your information.”

“Don’t you need to know if I can act or anything?”

She was stunned that he was actually going to register her after less than a five-minute conversation.

“I have what I need. Just shine every time we send you out, like you have right now with me, and you’ll be in business, believe me.”

As she left the office ten minutes later, Harlean plucked a business card from the secretary’s desk and gave it a victorious tap against her cheek. She was too stunned even to wonder what “in business” would actually mean in the coming days, but it didn’t matter, she reminded herself. She had won the bet, and she couldn’t wait to tell the girls, and see their faces when she did.

* * *

The next day, Harlean and Chuck took a picnic lunch into the bucolic grounds of Griffith Park. Chuck brought his camera, intent on taking photographs of his wife amid the lush surroundings. The rocky setting was like another world in the middle of a bustling city. There pine trees mingled with huge, glorious sycamores and a periwinkle-blue stream wound through it.

“The camera loves you.” He smiled as he clicked away, instructing her to pose this way and that atop a huge boulder beneath the warm midday sun. “You take my breath away.”

“I look like a schoolgirl in this outfit,” she said as she gestured to the gingham dress, baggy cardigan and sensible white tennis shoes he had chosen for her that morning.

“Not to me, you don’t.”

“Well, gingham isn’t very sexy.”

“You are my wife, I don’t want you to be sexy, at least not for anyone else but me. Besides vampy women are pretty loathsome. In my opinion, disgusting.”

Harlean thought of Pola Negri, her dark eyes beneath a silk turban, the hypnotic stare. She could not have disagreed with Chuck more. She respected any woman who could have that kind of power through a camera lens. It didn’t have to mean she was loose.

She had wanted to tell him about the dare all day, and about Dave Allen’s reaction. But something stronger stopped her. She knew she should be able to tell her husband anything, especially something that was actually kind of exciting, but she certainly did not want to ruin such a lovely afternoon by setting off his jealous streak.

After he had taken a few pictures, they sat in the shade of a gnarled old oak tree and Harlean unpacked sandwiches and a thermos full of lemonade. It was quiet here, pristine. The only sounds were from the stream running nearby and birds trilling in the trees above.

Chuck propped himself on an elbow. For a moment, he just watched her sitting against a tree trunk, knees drawn up to her chest.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Think about what?”

“About being back in California. Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

She leaned over and pressed a kiss onto his cheek. “Being married to you makes it all a hundred times better than that.”

“Well, you’re still the best thing ever to happen to me, that’s for sure.”

He said it matter-of-factly because he said it to her so often, but now there was a richness in his tone, like the sound of a pledge, and it touched her. She understood that it helped him believe in what they had together, and to remind her what was in his heart. Life had made him such a serious young man, and filled him with demons Harlean wasn’t sure she could ever fully help him vanquish, no matter how fiercely she loved him—especially because he wouldn’t acknowledge his feelings about the past with her.

But if she could continue making him happy, that would be a start and, she hoped, distraction enough.

“How about you, are you happy here?” she asked him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just thought maybe you missed home.”

“You are my home.”

He leaned over to kiss her as if to underscore the declaration.

“Sometimes I think I might like something to do.”

He tipped his head, and she knew that he had heard the change in her tone. “Like what?”

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know, just something to do with my days, that’s all.”

He ran a hand behind her neck and gently pulled her close so that he could kiss her again. It was so tender and sweet between them just then that she felt badly admitting to him that she could ever need anything else but his love and their marriage.

“Something more than keep our home and cook those wonderful meals you do?”

“I’m a horrible cook.”

“You are not.”

“Well, you are biased.”

She smiled as he caressed her neck with skillful fingertips, but she pulled away from him suddenly, sat back up and busied herself with pouring a second cup of lemonade. This was not the place for them to get carried away with more than a few kisses.

“What do you do when you’re gone from the house?” Harlean asked.

“I just knock around with the guys here and there, whatever they’re doing. No big deal. Got to stay in their good graces, you know. What’s with the third degree, doll?”

“I’m just curious.”

But of course it was more than that. She didn’t want to believe he had a serious problem with drinking, but his behavior with his new friends, and what happened on the cruise, had startled her enough to put the thought into her mind. She couldn’t help but worry now every time he took a drink because she saw that it changed him.

After lunch Chuck took the picnic basket back to the car. Then they hiked along the trails up through the hills of the park where they talked about a bit of everything, and nothing, as young couples do. As they wandered, she told him the vision she had for decorating their house, and then he proposed the possibility of taking a trip up the coast to Santa Barbara. Later, she asked him whether he’d yet been convinced of the beauty of poetry through reading the Keats volume together in the evenings. Harlean loved how he could make her laugh one minute, and say something poignant the next. She liked to think they could talk about anything, yet she still could not make herself tell him about the dare. Besides, flattering as it was, it wasn’t going to come to anything. Dave Allen had been polite but there really had been nothing more to it than that.

They held hands on the way back down to the car just as the afternoon air began to cool and the trees around them bristled.

“I need a long hot bath when we get home. I’m sore from all this walking,” she said.

“I’ll scrub your back.”

“Chuck!” She gave him a slight smile.

“The privileged life of a happily married man,” he declared, looking to her in that moment much older than he really was. Even when he smiled, there was always that deep sadness behind his eyes. Tragedy had a way of doing that to people, she thought, suddenly sorry she had never gotten to meet his parents. She had a feeling Chuck was a lot like them, and she found herself hoping they would have liked her.

* * *

Later that evening, after the dinner dishes were done, when Chuck himself surrendered to a bath she had drawn for him, Harlean had a moment to herself and picked up the telephone. While she had her mother’s aunt Jetty nearby out in Long Beach, who she could telephone from time to time when she got lonely, she had longed for days to make a call home.

“Oh, Baby, it’s so wonderful to hear your voice.”

“Yours, too, Mommie. You’ll never guess what happened, not in a million years!

“It really was the strangest thing.” She lowered her voice and cupped her hand around the heavy black phone receiver as she explained about Dave Allen.

In response, her mother gasped. “You’re joking! Why, that’s absolutely wonderful!”

“No one will call me of course, but I had to tell you about it.”

“Of course you did, my sweet baby girl. We tell each other everything. I’d have been hurt if you didn’t!”

Harlean felt herself relax just hearing her mother’s voice and the urge to confess further grew.

“I told them my name was Jean Harlow. I’m not sure why I did it. Maybe so Chuck wouldn’t have to know for now.”

“Sounds like you’re dealing with the same jealous Charles,” her mother said flatly. The dig at Chuck notwithstanding, Harlean still felt a familiar surge of longing for her mother’s company. She never realized so fully until they spoke again after a few days’ absence, just how much she missed their tender mother-and-daughter confidences.

Harlean could hear a sudden muffled exchange with a man on the other end of the line, her mother’s hand over the receiver. “You know, as it happens, Baby, Marino and I have been talking about taking a trip out to California ourselves, maybe staying awhile.”

She could hardly contain her joy at the prospect. Her dislike of her stepfather paled in comparison to her overpowering love for her mother.

Her father and slick Marino Bello were polar opposites. Mont Clair Carpenter, a prosperous dentist, had tried to give his beautiful blonde wife everything in order to keep her happy. As the marriage began to fall apart, he had worked hard just to keep her. In the end, no amount of money was able to do that. The fact that her mother had replaced her quiet, tenderhearted father with a huckster like Marino was as foul a thing as Harlean’s romantic mind could conjure. But her mother loved him, so Harlean had resolved long ago to keep her silence about him.

“Well, that would be really wonderful. I mean, if it’s no trouble for Marino.”

“Don’t be silly, Baby. Marino loves you as if you were his own daughter.”

She didn’t believe Marino really loved anyone other than himself, but as usual, she resisted saying it for her mother’s sake.

“And while I’m there, I can go with you on auditions. After all, I do know my way around the studios, so things will go so much more smoothly for you, my darling Baby. Fear not,” Jean Harlow Bello exclaimed, “Mother will be there soon.”

Chapter Six

Things were going so well between them that Harlean still hadn’t found the courage to tell Chuck about the impending visit by her mother and Marino. She and Chuck sometimes spent long, lazy mornings reading the newspaper together with breakfast in bed, and wonderful afternoons—when he wasn’t with the boys—ambling through quaint antiques shops in Santa Monica, hunting for special pieces to accent their home. She only wished it could be more often. In the evenings, they often played backgammon, or cards with Rosalie and Ivor. But her hesitation over revealing the visit sooner than she must was not without reason. Chuck found Jean Bello overbearing and controlling. And despite Harlean’s best efforts, he could not be swayed to see what it was that she loved so much about her mother.

A yipping sound, a high-pitched bark, woke her very suddenly one morning, a few days after their hike through Griffith Park. Harlean struggled to see the clock on her bedside table. Half past eight. She could feel the bed was empty beside her. The heavy draperies on her bedroom windows blotted out most of the morning sunlight so she flipped on a Tiffany bedside lamp and sat up. On the floor beside her dressing table was a fluffy ginger-colored Pomeranian puppy, yelping at her for attention. A lover of animals, Harlean was delighted to see such a cute little dog mysteriously at her feet, however it had arrived there.

“Well, now, who might you be?”

She tossed back the covers, went across the room and saw a red bow and the note tied around the puppy’s small neck.

Oscar will keep you company when I’m not here. He is the only other boy allowed access to your boudoir. Love, Chuck.

Entirely charmed by the cute and unexpected gift, she placed her hands on her hips. “Oscar, is it?” The dog stopped barking now that she was paying attention and his tail began to wag. “You’re an awfully demanding fella, aren’t you, Oscar?”

She bent down and scooped him up into her arms, which he quite happily tolerated with a whimper. Then he began to lick her cheek with his sandpaper tongue.

“Let’s get one thing straight right from the start, Buster Brown. You might have access to my bedroom boudoir, but my husband is the only one allowed to kiss me in here, is that clear?”

It felt like ages since Harlean had had a pet of her own. Back in Missouri, she’d had quite a menagerie to care for and keep her company while her mother was out. When she was a little girl, Grandpa Harlow had spoiled her with kittens, a Labrador puppy and even a parrot—as many pets as she could convince him to let her have. She owed her grandfather a letter, she thought, and she would reread his last one to her for how much she missed him.

Her heart swelled with love that Chuck had thought to do this. She’d been so horribly homesick lately, but this gift made everything seem so much better. Especially with the blindingly dull day of bridge and shopping which lay ahead for her today.

She stroked the puppy’s head and, once again, he lunged for her face to lick her. “I can see we are going to have to work on your manners, Oscar,” she joked as she took him into the kitchen to see if her very thoughtful husband’s gesture had extended to the purchase of dog food.

* * *

It had to be done. Harlean knew she had already put off too long telling Chuck about her mother and Marino’s visit, which was now only a few days away. In an attempt to divert an argument, she had decided to mention it just after Rosalie and Ivor arrived one evening for a game of cards. Earlier in the day, she had confided in Rosalie, who wasn’t particularly thrilled to be caught up in another potential scene, like on the cruise ship, over the subject of Harlean’s mother.

“I owe you,” Harlean murmured to Rosalie in the kitchen as she stirred a pitcher of lemonade and set it on a tray.

“Damn right you do. Have you even told him yet about Dave Allen?”