Twilight of the Immortal

By Marilyn Jaye Lewis

As the Great War tore through Europe in the spring of 1916, the privileged stars of Broadway still wore the height of Paris fashions, danced the tango and drank champagne––and ignited a great debate: Stick to the noble tradition of the theater? Or take the train west to a dusty crossroads called Hollywood and stake one’s fortunes in the new frontier of motion pictures? Twilight of the Immortal tells the remarkable story of early Hollywood through the eyes of Rosemary McKisco, a wayward young heiress who throws in her lot with the great Alla Nazimova, the first openly lesbian star of stage and screen. Fleeing a respectable marriage to a wealthy Broadway producer on the eve of America’s entry into the Great War, Rosemary follows Nazimova to Hollywood, navigating her twilight world where women prefer women and men prefer men. It is the heyday of the Silent Era––a time of indulgent excess, of scandals and free love. For a shining moment, Rudolph Valentino reigns as the silver screen’s “Greatest Lover” and Rosemary is not immune to his magnetic charm. As his trusted confidante, she stands by him through the curses of his outrageous fortune––and barely survives his sudden, tragic death. By 1927, as Valentino’s infamous funeral fades from the daily headlines to become the less volatile stuff of legend, Rosemary makes her peace with Hollywood at last, but at what cost?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781365134326

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TWILIGHT OF THE iMMORTAL

Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Twilight of the Immortal Copyright © 2011 by Marilyn Jaye Lewis. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. 

Cover designed by Valerie Wares 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Visit www.marilynjayelewis.com 

Printed in the United States of America 

For Peitor Angell

With Love

No one here can love or understand me;

Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me;

Make my bed and light the light,

I'll be home late tonight,

Blackbird -- bye, bye.

Bye-Bye Blackbird, Dixon-Henderson

part One

chapter One

I wish my story were just beginning. Right here, Christmas 1927, in this luxurious compartment on the Golden State Limited as the train pulls into Los Angeles. I am looking rather spiffy for the occasion, as if nothing in my sordid past had ever occurred.

If things were just beginning now, I could be innocence personified. There would be nothing but accolades in store. Even Mr. Quirk over at Photoplay would be blithe about it: Friends, he might feverishly scribble, all Hollywood is waiting for her to step off that gleaming train! Palm trees caress the sapphire skies all over Los Angeles today and that crystalline Pacific, bluer than ever, waits out there at the edge of destiny, as if ready to burst into breathtaking view just for her, for our little Rosemary!

It beats how my story actually began -- back in Manhattan, blindly sailing my way into nothing but trouble. I posed as a sophisticate back then, as a very gay sort of gal, without having a clue what I was getting into. If Nazimova wanted to sleep with me, well then I was going to sleep with her, end of story. It had little to do with lust and nothing to do with love or romance. It was all about opportunity. She was so fucking famous.

I was eighteen on that first trip out here. I was Nazimova’s indiscreet girl of the moment. This was near the end of the Great War, the summer of 1918. In those days, my life was perpetually outpacing me -- okay, so she’s a Sapphist, I thought, so what? I’ll go to Hollywood. I was always making those hurried choices without stopping to think. A thing I continued to excel at right up until last summer, when Rudy suddenly died and the lure of destiny, mine or anyone else’s, came to a screeching halt.

It’s regrettable, what I’ve learned about human nature since that first journey in 1918. I think that’s why I’ve grown so ashamed of being myself. All the things I’ve ingested since then have become a part of me -- and by ‘ingested’ I’m not referring to the gallons of rot gut gin I’ve drunk, or the opium I’ve smoked, or even those expensive European cigarettes I became so addicted to when I was with Rudy and Natacha in Paris, or all that champagne we drank in 1924.

No, by ingested, I mean all the rotten little apples of humility I’ve had to chew and swallow with a smile out here in Hollywood, until I thought my spleen would explode. The indecencies I witnessed without protesting, the appalling bad manners I often had, and the indignities I was always pretending I hadn’t seen.

If all the rottenness of life could be condensed into a single pill and swallowed with a glass of milk it would be so much easier. I could have skipped the last nine years of this nightmare and gone straight from naïveté to wisdom, knowing all I needed to know, ready to make better choices without wasting all the years. I could be fresh as a virgin bride today and yet be so much better equipped for survival than the kind of virgin I was, so briefly, at the start of the war.

I’m getting married tomorrow, hence my reference to being a bride. It’s why I’ve returned to Hollywood in such grand style even though I’m flat broke.

I’m marrying Mitch Sinclair, one of the moneymen at United Artists. The same man who’s covered my expensive stay in a sanitarium in New England this last wretched year since Valentino’s funeral -- where I made such a mess of myself.

I’m not marrying Mitch for love, though, and he doesn’t love me. Not in the way men traditionally love women, that is. He loves me more as a human being reaches out to embrace a kindred spirit. To be blunt, we’re getting married because the studios don’t want any bachelors over forty on their executive payrolls. It smells too much like pansies and it makes the Catholics nervous. And anything that makes the Catholics nervous these days makes the Hays Office jump.

Mitch’s telegram to me read:

TROUBLE IN PARADISE (STOP) THINGS GETTING QUEER HERE ARE YOU DONE GOING CRAZY (STOP) COME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD AND MARRY ME (STOP) REGARDS (STOP) ME

I never was one who could resist such heady romance. When I got the all-clear from Dr. Dohlmer to hang up my basket weaving and plunge into what he considered the stabilizing environs of matrimony even if those environs were back in Hollywood, I left the sanitarium posthaste and now I’m heading straight to the fiduciary arms of Mitchell Sinclair. The ever gallant, exceedingly well groomed, confirmed bachelor of forty-five who’s every inch the queer he’s suspected of being.

Mitch and I go back at least a thousand years. He worked at Metro in 1918, back when those immigrant boys from New York who run the place were so desperate to appear cultured. And the great Alla Nazimova may have been an over-sexed girl devourer, but she was nothing if not cultured. Plus she was Jewish, like they were. Metro swallowed the idea of Nazimova whole, nearly giving her carte-blanche at the studio while knowing full well what they were getting into -- meaning her non-stop lesbian shenanigans, on-screen and off. The off-screen part was where Mitch met me, Rosemary McKisco, the future Mrs. Sinclair, back before Prohibition was even being considered.

He came to one of those swanky romps Nazimova was always throwing at the 8080 Club, her Garden of Alla over on Sunset Boulevard where I was still living. Technically, I wasn’t sleeping with Alla at that point. I was sleeping with her maid, Molly; a girl more my age who was a lot less demanding in bed than Her Highness could be. Molly and I had met in Nazimova’s dressing room back in New York and were then in and out of bed together for years.

At one particular soiree, though, I met Mitch. As a moneyman for any studio, not just Metro, Mitchell Sinclair would have stood out. For one thing, he’d never stepped one exquisitely shod foot in the cesspool that is Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He’s Ivy League all the way. His family’s money dates back to Plymouth Rock, I think. They bought it outright when they got off the boat. They own a substantial portion of Dr. Dohlmer’s clinic in New England, too, which is why I received the white glove treatment the entire time I was sequestered there as Mitch’s guest.

Mitch is comfortable with his wealth. He doesn’t need to flaunt it. Unlike those Jewish immigrants from the Lower East Side, privilege has always been part and parcel of Mitch’s life. The way he carries himself, at least in public, is never less than impeccable. Of course behind closed doors, Mitch can get downright depraved, but he manages it without showing so much as a blemish the following morning. And speaking of getting depraved behind closed doors, it was Mitch who was the primary sponsor for Valentino’s membership in the Los Angeles Athletic Club. It was a brilliant move on Mitch’s part. It helped secure Rudolph Valentino’s toehold on the slipperiest of all ladders: social success in Hollywood.

That’s one of the reasons I’m so devoted to Mitch. He fell under Valentino’s spell as much as the rest of us did only Mitch had too much breeding to openly show it. I know he looked out for Rudy. He tried to protect him when the other studio men wanted Rudy eviscerated. I’ve never had the stomach to come out and ask Mitch if he’d actually slept with Valentino or not. I suspect, of course, that he did. And I know Mitch knows the truth about me. Perhaps this will give me something to talk about some idyllic evening after we’re married: So out with it, Mitch: did you screw him, too?

This time last year, after Mitch had had the decency to have me committed to Dohlmer’s loony bin in New England, I didn’t think I’d ever want to see Hollywood again. Regardless of my bond with Mitch, with Rudy dead, what would be the purpose in my returning to California? George Ullman was overseeing the settling of Valentino’s estate, but with the enormous debts Rudy left behind, there was no payroll left for me to be on. Not that I would ever consider working for someone as ordinary as George Ullman. Not that I considered myself working for Valentino, either. I had been Natacha’s employee. I looked after Rudy because I wanted to. By the end, I wanted that more than anything else -- to be with Rudy. And I don’t imagine Natacha will ever forgive me for staying on with him after she left. But alas, we all make choices; don’t we? It’s the essence of living life. It’s what gives us each our own unique story. If there’s one thing I learned during my stay at Dohlmer’s clinic, it’s that I’m not going to beat myself up anymore over who my heart has chosen to love and who my heart has chosen to leave.

It was Natacha who made the choice to leave the Great Valentino, although I don’t blame her for doing it. In the end, Rudy was fucking her over pretty good. But I didn’t love Natacha anymore. I wasn’t sure I ever had. She was more my ticket to break free of Nazimova and still have some kind of employment in Hollywood. I had accomplished that little trick in spades. I had a great job with the Valentinos; I looked after them personally. It was a position coveted by millions all over the world. Whatever choice Natacha needed to make was up to her, not me.

Yet when I’m honest with myself, somewhere deep at the heart of my conflicting allegiances with the battling Valentinos, I’d known Natacha was being treated like dirt by both Rudy and United Artists. I’d known it wasn’t fair. But her domineering personality had grown so grating and relentless, day in and day out, it had numbed my conscience. By the end, I was just as rotten as everyone else. I was secretly thrilled watching Natacha being publicly and privately ground down, and in deluding myself into thinking that, with Natacha gone, Rudolph Valentino would once again be available.

I wasn’t too far wrong, really. Rudy was playing a wide-open field at the end. A lot of us were in and out of his bed. What I wouldn’t allow myself to acknowledge, though, was how much Rudy had truly loved Natacha and the depth of his despair after she was gone. The hole it left in him could never have been filled by any of us, I see that now. It was too gaping, until Valentino himself plunged, soul first, into the abyss.

"Rosemary, hullo!"

"Mitch -- my god, you startled me."

I’d been years away; lost in the past, as always. When was I going to stop this? I hadn’t even noticed that the train had stopped moving. Now too suddenly, here was Hollywood.

Mitchell Sinclair, looking dapper as ever, entered my private luxury compartment that he’d insisted on and paid for, followed by a fair-haired man in a pink suit who turned out to be Murphy, Mitch’s new personal assistant. And by Mitch’s chauffeur, a Chinese man named Han who had been working in Mitch’s various homes since 1914.

"Rosemary, my dear, Mitch exclaimed, sounding a little too relieved, you look positively spiffy."

Good enough to be Mrs. Mitchell Sinclair, I hope?

Absolutely. Murphy, help Han with Rosemary’s bags, will you?

Even Han seemed relieved that I looked so presentable. Missy Rose look very rested, he said. Big, big party for you tomorrow. Everyone happy to see the bride.

As the enormity of Han’s remark seeped like corrosive poison from my ears down to my now clenching stomach, Mitch ushered Han and Murphy out of the compartment.

"Mitch -- a party? I thought this was going to be a private civil ceremony. Just you and me, a judge and a witness. No parties. I don’t want everyone gawking at me, at us."

Mitch took my arm and led me out of the compartment. It couldn’t be helped, Rosemary, he tried to explain as we squeezed through the crowded passageway. The front office is throwing it for us at the Ambassador Hotel, in the Coconut Grove. It became a big to-do and I couldn’t refuse them.

He helped me step down from the train on to the swarming platform. Swallowed by the crowd, Murphy and Han and my baggage were already out of sight.

The front office always likes a reason for a public celebration, especially with it being so close to Christmas. You know that. It’s good for their press relations. And God knows they’re relieved that I’m finally making it legal with a woman. It’ll get Hays off their backs.

But I’m not ready to face anyone yet; I just got out of a nut house, for heaven‘s sake! All the whispering and staring. I’m ill just thinking about it, the things they’ll be saying behind my back.

Rose, listen to me. Mitch squeezed my arm emphatically as we waited in the frenzied crowd for Han and Murphy to come around with the car. Everyone loved Rudy. We all miss him. Nobody blames you for doing what you did.

Everyone loved him? I kept my mouth shut, yet I couldn’t help but think of New York City in August of last year when Rudy died. The night I spent vomiting bile into the toilet in my hotel room. Bile, because the contents of my stomach had long since emptied out and I couldn’t quit vomiting. My very liver was spewing, as if every organ in my entire being were at last rejecting the trumped up parade of Hollywood egos that had descended on New York for the ballyhoo that was so solemnly referred to as Valentino’s funeral. Every one of those Hollywood creeps conveniently forgetting how they had once considered Rudolph Valentino nothing more than a slick wop and a blackmailing gigolo.

As I retched the foulness of my insides into the porcelain bowl that night, I’d conceded with bitterness that Jesse Lasky had nailed it, way back in 1921, after he’d gotten a load of the profits turned by The Sheik. He’d said that from now on, women would swarm to Valentino’s films no matter what. They’d plunk down their last pilfered nickel. Even if it were utter tripe barely concealed in elaborate costumes. The films wouldn’t have to be art, Lasky had told everyone privately. The photoplays could be paper-thin and the ideas even thinner. It simply wouldn’t matter. If Valentino were starring in it, Lasky predicted that from now on the women would crawl all over the dolled-up excrement like flies in their efforts to escape the reality of their husbands and their useless, boxed-in lives.

Okay, so maybe Lasky never used a word as civilized as ‘excrement’ in his entire life. But that was what he’d meant and I think, in my blood, I’d understood all along that he was right. Valentino films would never be confused with art again. The Four Horsemen days were over.

Deep down in his bones, Rudy had come to understand it, too, though he had a more poetic way of spewing his bile.

Like that night in the summer of ‘25, just before Natacha had left him, when Rudy had taken me around to Lillie’s for an hour’s romp with that fellationous young Mexican, Manuel.

Lillie’s call house was tucked up in the hills off Sunset Boulevard. Rudy was too classy to frequent the male brothels downtown and he couldn’t take me, a woman, into the Los Angeles Athletic Club. As a compromise, we dropped in on Manuel at Miss Lillie’s.

In the overly feminine front parlor, free shots of offshore bourbon were served and one-reelers of crude French pornography were shown in the evenings. That night, Rudy spied a couple of moneymen watching the one-reelers; men he’d helped put on the map during his days at Metro -- when profits for The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had unexpectedly soared through the roof and made Rudy a star. These men were utterly classless when compared to the likes of Mitchell Sinclair. They were no longer comfortable seeing Rudolph Valentino, the suspected queer, under ordinary circumstances, let alone while viewing pornography in some high class call house with their fists inside their trousers.

Rudy seemed delighted to be breaking in on them in flagrante delicto. Under his breath, he told me, Observe, Rosemary, how in Hollywood there is no difference between a knife and a smile.

Rudy led me across the frilly front room and, being careful not to block a moment of the pornographic activities flickering on the makeshift screen, he extended his hand to the moneymen from Metro. Good evening, gentlemen, he said pleasantly.

The ‘gentlemen’ didn’t know what the hell to do with themselves then. They’d been jerking off, for heaven’s sake. Enjoying the free dirty movies without having to spend actual money upstairs on an expensive girl. How disconcerting to be approached in the middle of it by some garlic-eating fag, and me, a mere personal assistant observing it all.

Still the men were forced to be civil, visibly chafing under the strain of their own obsequiousness. Even I knew everyone at Metro was working overtime that season trying to cover Thalberg’s ass with Von Stroheim terrorizing Mae Murray and every exorbitant aspect of production on The Merry Widow. These men couldn’t afford to snub anybody, not even a suspected queer. They might need new jobs at any moment and Rudolph Valentino was with Joseph Schenck at United Artists now and back on top.

The hypocrites even feigned the decency to not look insulted when Rudy pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket with a flourish and none too discreetly wiped the sordid traces of their sweaty licentiousness from his hand.

We left them smiling stupidly; their erections now limp as Rudy escorted me out of the parlor.

United Artists writes the name Valentino in black ink, he decried in his subtle Italian accent as we headed for the backstairs that led up to Manuel’s room. "That’s all that concerns those swine. Not even their dignity matters. Did you see that pathetic display? They don’t defend their manhood. In this town, they are measured solely by the color of the ink the studio uses at the end of the day. Are the films in the black or in the red ink? Never forget that, Rosemary. There’s nothing sacred to a studio, no heart, no conscience. Only a giant -- what is it called? he asked, his English failing him momentarily. The book they write the numbers in?"

It was my job to supply Valentino with everything he needed, even a suitable English vocabulary, if that’s what the moment required. A ledger? I offered.

A ledger, he concurred. Nothing at the core of a studio but a giant ledger, Rosemary. Don’t ever forget that.

In Hollywood there is no difference between a knife and a smile. It’s the color of the ink that matters. It was Valentino’s way of saying it was all rot; suitable for attracting flies, not suitable for creating art. More times than I could count, he’d spoken with envy and admiration about Abel Gance’s set-up in Paris. Like Gance’s J’Accuse!, Valentino longed to make pictures that mattered to the human heart again, to be in control of the whole movie making process. In Paris, it was possible to do that.

Yet, after Lasky and the Paramount debacle were finally a closed chapter in Rudy’s career, when his future was once again bright with United Artists, Valentino went back to making his easy fortune in Hollywood, letting others dictate the course of his career. He didn’t go to Paris to make art; he only went there to spend his fortune -- and to sign his divorce papers from Natacha. A document that I now saw brought the whole house of cards tumbling down.

Rose? I said how do you feel about wearing white?

I suddenly realized Mitch was speaking to me. We were sitting together in the back seat of his Panhard-Levassor limousine, with the ever-attentive Murphy squeezed in beside us, poised to commit my reply to memory.

Evidently Mitch was speaking of wedding gowns or something along those horrible lines.

You can’t mean a public ceremony? I balked. "A huge, alienating party at the Coconut Grove isn’t awful enough on its own; we have to exchange vows in front of these animals, too? Mitch, you can’t be serious."

He hugged my shoulder with gusto and his magnetic laughter filled the back of the car. "Of course, I’m serious! Don’t look so defeated, my little Sheba. I don’t work for just any studio, I work for United Artists. Surely, you haven’t been gone that long -- you remember United Artists? Doug Fairbanks and Little Mary Pickford of Sunnybrook Farm? The ever charming Mr. Schenck? Any of these names ringing a bell? The eyes of the breathless world are on every move the studio makes and the studio loves the gentlemen of the press. I told you about the homecoming they managed to swing for Gloria Swanson, a standing ovation for nearly an hour. As if she’d been sainted by the Pope while she was gone, when I know for a fact she was on the brink of death from a botched abortion. But they had her decked out in some amazing togs, didn’t they, Murphy? You should see the array of wedding gowns awaiting your approval back at the house, Rose."

All the latest styles, Murphy added reassuringly. In an array of sizes, as well.

I thought dismally of the weight I’d gained in the sanitarium, although I had to admit I was grateful I wasn’t facing what poor Gloria had been through.

Come on, Rose, buck up, Mitch coaxed me. Hasn’t it been your secret dream since girlhood to have a white wedding?

Actually yes, I confessed. It was, until I gave up my virginity to a friend of my stepfather’s at the tender age of seventeen. Then I gave it up again to the great Nazimova, but that was a different kind of virginity altogether, wasn’t it? I don’t think a white wedding is too appropriate for a girl who’s been as modern as I’ve been, do you?

At the mention of virgins, a disconcerted air clouded over Murphy. He slouched noticeably in his seat. Mitch, on the other hand, was determined to keep the mood upbeat and lighthearted.

Listen, Rose, in the land of make believe, all we have to do is ‘make believe’ you’re a virgin and voila! -- you’re a virgin. In Hollywood, it’s that simple. A white wedding it is, then.

A white wedding, a public ceremony, a party at the Coconut Grove; I was feeling sick to my stomach.

It was either an all-out affair at the Ambassador, Mitch warned me, or one of those endless garden parties over at Pickfair that drag on and on. I chose the lesser of two evils by opting for the hotel, don’t you think? This way, we can make our excuses when we’ve absolutely had enough and bow out early without being too noticeable -- randy little newlyweds that I’m sure we’ll be.

Mitch held my hand affectionately in his. Even if he’d liked girls, I couldn’t picture us ever being randy little newlyweds together. He was eighteen years older than me. Not that I considered Mitch old. Life had a way of continually invigorating him. He suffered life’s blows like anyone else, but he adjusted to the weight of his burdens gracefully. He didn’t internalize the injustices the way I did. And at 45, he was closing in on fifty, yet I was the one who felt old and beaten down.

I realized at that moment that I needed to pull myself together. Who cared if there was going to be a public celebration? Anyone married to Mitchell Sinclair would have little to complain about. Yes, he was loaded with old money, but that was the least of it. I came from old money, too, and this wedding was going to get me back in the good graces of my stepfather -- I would get my inheritance at last. But Mitch was also undeniably handsome, good-natured and loyal. For him to be joined in ‘holy matrimony’ to some disgruntled fishwife until death parted us would be out of the question. He deserved much better than that. Even though we would be married in name only, I felt it was my duty to offer him something more than complaints. He had been good to me.

I forced myself to be agreeable. You’re probably right. The Coconut Grove is always preferable to some tedious garden party at Pickfair. I’ll try to be a good sport about it, Mitch. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting this -- to be on display. Especially under the circumstances. I mean, it’s not like we’re fooling anybody.

"Au contraire, Rosemary. We may not be fooling the front office, but Hollywood isn’t about fooling the front office, is it? They don’t care if I’m queer. All they care about is that we make it look good. That we keep perpetuating those infantile Catholic myths that keep brave Americans breeding."

Murphy’s face sank deep into the lapels of his pink suit, his Irish Catholicism springing out all over him. Clearly, he hadn’t been in Mitch’s employ very long.

After spending Saturday nights overindulging in some tacky speakeasy, Mitch continued, and before they go off obediently to church on Sunday, hung over Americans want to see pictures in their morning papers of happy movie stars attending a proper but extravagant wedding. Especially if there’s been a lack of newsworthy love triangles that have ended in a grisly murder. Attending weddings makes it look as if movie stars have recognizable morals. And nothing staves off Bolshevists better than proud Americans going off to church on Sundays with a hot breakfast in their bellies and the happy notion in their silly heads that movie stars have recognizable morals.

Mitch’s remarks finally dragged a smile out of me. I knew there was a reason I was marrying you, Mitchell Sinclair. It’s your unspoiled idealism about this rotten town we so cherish. It’s positively infectious.

He gave my hand a quick squeeze. I’ve never infected anybody with anything, Rose, he said. Don’t you start spreading nasty rumors.

Tenderness -- that was the word for it. My hand held warmly in his; a simple thing that didn’t require the exhausting entanglements of passion. It suddenly occurred to me that all this time it was tenderness that had been absent from the intimacy in my life; kindness, with no underlying ulterior motives. My heart ached from the obviousness of it. More than a year in Dohlmer’s clinic and it hadn’t once occurred to me that my body craved tenderness.

That’s a lot of time wasted, I thought. Nearly fifteen months in a nut house. All that invasive prying into my sordid past, when apparently all I needed was for someone kind to hold my hand.

My eyes burned from the tears that suddenly wanted to flood them. Why was I always so misguided? What was it about me? I wasn’t going to let myself cry, though. Not here in the back seat of Mitch’s luxurious car, with nothing but blue skies extending to the far horizon. I was tired of being the one who disrupted the contentedness of others. I wouldn’t cry.

I tried to focus instead on the scenery whizzing past the car. How much Los Angeles had grown in a year; still more bungalows, by the thousands it seemed, had sprouted up and encroached on the beauty of what had once been Nature’s perfection. Would the migration ever stop? Would the myriad hopefuls ever have the sense to just stay home?

The car began its steady climb into Beverly Hills. Four years ago, Mitch had been the first at United Artists who’d had the balls to live higher up in the hills than Pickfair. And of course he had managed it without appearing ostentatious. Everyone knew Mitch was old money and a so-called sophisticate from back East. A rare man like him, meaning a queer with real cash, was accorded a wider berth; what might be considered indiscretions in others were overlooked in a man like Mitch because of his sheer wealth.

Not that there weren’t a few others who already lived higher up in the hills than he did. It’s just that they didn’t work directly for America’s Sweetheart & Spouse, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. From Mitch’s home, you can look up and see King Vidor’s estate cresting Tower Road, or what was once Vidor’s estate. Just last month, it was bought by that sweet mess John Barrymore. And up a little higher than that is the villa of another drunk, albeit a much tidier one, Jack Gilbert. His villa is perched there in its Mediterranean perfection, its solitude; high above all of us as if Gilbert owned the entire world. And maybe he does, since he’s pulling ten grand a week now. Although I hear he’s doing his drinking alone these days. That strange Swedish job, Garbo, ran off on him a few months back. She’s shacking up with a girl instead. Mitch says it’s broken Jack’s heart.

Falling in love with a dyke. Now that was a thing Valentino excelled at. Maybe Jack Gilbert really will be the ‘next Valentino,’ as Metro has been trying to persuade us for years for entirely different reasons.

Slightly to the west of Mitch’s home are Benedict Canyon and its tiny offshoot, Bella Drive. Somewhere up in that tangle of shrubs and cliffs is Falcon Lair. Closed now, deserted. Valentino is dead. The dogs, the horses, the cars; the old gang -- all of it is gone. I think the house was destined for tragedy since the day Natacha refused to set foot in it.

The limousine eased up the front drive that wound toward Mitch’s secluded estate. It pulled to a stop inside the inner courtyard. Han helped me out of the car and Mitch led me up to the graceful colonnaded entrance.

Mitch doesn’t go in for the Mediterranean look, those clay-tiled rooftops and stucco walls. His house has the clean lines of a classical pavilion, painted pristine white with nothing but meticulous landscaping wherever the eye rests. The trees are tall enough now and the surrounding shrubs thick enough, to make the thousands of residents who have settled into the hills below his estate nearly impossible to detect. But they also obscure the glimmer of the Pacific Ocean that I used to be able to see from Mitch’s front door.

Welcome home, Mitch said.

It sounded funny. I hadn’t had a real home since I was eighteen and left my mother and stepfather and the townhouse on East Fifty-Fifth Street.

The residence of Mitchell Sinclair was nothing at all like that townhouse had been. Or like any other place I’ve lived in and left since 1918. Mitch’s tastes are unlike most Californians’ -- there are none of those rough hewn beams in Mitch’s house, or rooms paneled in oppressive dark wood and draped in heavy velvet. No wrought iron will be found anywhere and no heavy Spanish furniture. In fact, since Mitch’s visit to Paris in the summer of ’25, his tastes have swung heavily toward Arts Décos. His furnishings are imported from the Paris designers -- Poiret, Ruhlmann, and Le Corbusier; lots of angles and lacquer surfaces and plenty of bright fabrics. The paintings on his walls are mostly modern nudes or geometric shapes in lively colors. Expensive patterned rugs are in every room and they extend from one wall to another, leaving barely a hint of the mahogany parquetry floors showing at the edges. Everything about Mitch’s home feels bright and uncluttered.

Well, Rose, what do you think?

Mitch opened the door to the large bedroom with adjoining bath that was now going to be mine. I’d spent many a night passed out in this room, but back then every available surface hadn’t been draped with a white wedding gown that was awaiting my approval. It was intimidating, suffocating. I like what you’ve done with it, Mitch. It’s a veritable costume department.

Han and Murphy left my bags on the enormous bed and politely excused themselves.

Mitch smiled at me encouragingly. His dark hair perfectly groomed; his expensive, hand-tailored suit draping his body just right, as if the suit were more comfortable on him than his own skin. He certainly seemed to be taking the idea of a public wedding calmly. I decided I should try to emulate that look of self-assuredness as best I could. It might help the gods to work in my favor.

"Make yourself comfortable, Rose, but not too comfortable. We have to find you a wedding gown in this mess that will fit you. We don’t have time to have it altered before the wedding. Thank god for prêt à porter, oui?"

Oui, I concurred, never having bought off the rack in my life.

Before he left me alone in the mountain of gowns, he said, You get yourself settled and when you need me, just holler. You remember where everything is, I hope -- nothing’s changed.

Yes, I remembered where everything was. I had only attempted suicide; I’d lost my mind, not my memory. I was familiar with everything in Mitch’s house -- except for his lavish bedroom; I had never been invited to spend much time in there. Although I knew many of the men who had been invited in; I’d been a party to many a bait and switch in the past. It was a game Mitch himself had taught me early on. I would make a date with some attractive actor working for whichever studio Mitch was saddled to at the time, any young man who had caught Mitch’s roving eye. But my dates with these actors never progressed to anything intimate; I never brought them home. I’d suggest dropping in at the home of my friend, Mitchell Sinclair, instead. Without fail, each ambitious young actor would recognize the name Mitchell Sinclair, knowing he was a powerful producer at the studio, and so off we’d go; the trap was baited.

It wasn’t a game I was necessarily proud of, but the sordidness of it had held a certain appeal for me -- a fact of which I was now even less proud. It was uncanny, though, how many of my dates willingly succumbed to Mitch’s sexual overtures. What was even more curious was how many of those seductions blossomed into all-out affairs.

Over time, as the Hays Office became more insidious, I developed a sense for which of the baited men were queer from the get-go. On those occasions, I would feign a headache during the cocktails and politely excuse myself to Mitch’s guestroom for the night. I didn’t mind keeping myself entertained.

But sometimes, when I was in one of my more morbid stupors, when I knew full well that the man I’d procured for Mitch wasn’t queer and was unprepared for what was about to happen, I would nurse a cocktail slowly and watch the seduction unfold right there on the sofa in Mitch’s living room, as if I didn’t have a clue what was taking place.

There’s an element of the exhibitionist lurking in every actor’s ego, making an attentive female audience desirable for just about everything, even for those illicit fêtes where a man’s trousers are falling down around his ankles and a powerful producer is clearly preparing to fellate him.

I guess I’d gotten pretty jaded by then. When the inevitable erection would spring out into the open, I’d freshen my cocktail with a clear conscience and watch Mitch go to work. Unlike me, oral sex is something he has always excelled at, pushing many of my dates into obvious ecstasy. We’d all have a swell time then -- the watcher and the watched. But climactic finales were saved for the privacy of Mitch’s bedroom. That’s where the sex inevitably got more serious; where voices either grew volatile, or very quiet indeed.

I wondered if married life as Mrs. Mitchell Sinclair would yield anything different, or just a little more of the same. But, really, was there anyone left in Hollywood who didn’t already know the game? After all, it was 1927 already…

I purposely delayed looking at any of the wedding gowns United Artists had been kind enough to send over and I set about unpacking my meager baggage instead. Almost everything I’d owned I’d either smashed to smithereens or torn to shreds the night I’d tried to kill myself in my suite at the Hotel Ambassador in New York. I had very little left to my name and god knows I hadn’t accumulated much in the way of possessions during my stay in the nut house.

I pulled open the doors to the spacious closet only to discover that it was brimming with white satin t-strap shoes and lace veils. I correctly assumed then that the boys at UA hadn’t overlooked a single detail. I opened the dresser drawers to find silk stockings and lace lingerie. I couldn’t imagine that it mattered one bit what I wore under the gown. It’s not as though I had an eager groom waiting to discover the mysteries of my delicate chastity. But as Mitch had said, it was the land of make believe. The gowns and the lace and the delicate underthings had probably been selected especially for me by men from the costume department at United Artists who were likely as queer as Mitch.

That brought a smile to my face; the utter lack of reality surrounding the whole affair.

Welcome back to Hollywood, Rosemary McKisco, I told myself. Welcome back to everything your heart had hoped to obliterate.

chapter two

T

hat night, Mitch and I dined at eight by candlelight -- by many candles, in fact. So many that they gave off a tangible heat that was not at all unpleasant; it was rather nostalgic. It reminded me of the séances Natacha used to hold long into the night, before Valentino’s fame shot into the stratosphere and even the most mundane aspects of their marriage became unbearably public.

We weren’t dining in the formal dining room, but in the more intimate salon d’Apollon, a sun room bedecked in murals devoted to Apollo, the Greek sun god; the god of fine arts, only here depicted as if he were Egyptian and conceived by George Lepape for an oversized cover of Vogue -- all geometric lines and circles and the women’s pointy nipples always so hard to ignore. The salon was a haven for potted palms, ferns, and blooming bursts of flowers of such strangeness; they smelled heavenly and looked rather suggestively like women’s genitalia, only in bright colors. French doors were open onto the brick patio where more tropical foliage abounded. It was a balmy evening. I was at last in good spirits until Jim Temple, a designer I knew from the old Metro days, came in and sat down at the table in a surly mood.

Rosemary, he said flatly -- in way of a vague greeting, I suppose. We made reluctant eye contact. He was already drunk. I said, Jim. It’s been a long time.

Yes, ages. And aren’t you looking all hotsy-totsy; you don’t look a bit crazy, you know. I’d heard you put on weight, but I’m not seeing it. A drape of white lace gathered here and there, and won’t you make the perfect Mrs. Mitchell Sinclair.

His undertone was so abrasive that I knew it was not meant as any kind of compliment. I bit my tongue. I didn’t like Jim Temple but Mitch adored him, always had and always would. Or so I thought.

Jim’s packing, Mitch offered cheerfully. And since he was already here, I went ahead and invited him to dine with us.

He’s packing? I drew an unfortunate blank; I somehow mistook this as some sort of task Jim had undertaken to assist Mitch. We’re not moving are we?

No, Jim cut in acidly. We’re not moving; I am. As in: out the door and onto my cute little keester, thank you very much.

Don’t mind Jim, Rose; he’s drunk.

I can see that, I said. I glanced at Jim long enough to feel the bottomless pit of hate he suddenly aimed at me from two very deep black eyes. I looked back at Mitch. Is this on my account? I would hate for anything to be changed on my account, Mitch.

Mitch pulled a bottle of the finest offshore champagne from a sterling silver wine bucket. It sat on its own handy sterling silver pedestal next to the cozy dining table. You and I are getting married, Rose. Surely you haven’t forgotten already. You made a very long train trip out here to be my bride -- to be the lady of the house. You arrived this very afternoon, in fact.

I haven’t forgotten, Mitch. It’s just that…

Mitch regarded me so pleasantly while Jim’s eyes continued to shoot so many daggers my way that I felt positively pinned to my chair. It had an unnerving effect. I wasn’t sure what to say. Under the apparent circumstances -- the ousting of an illicit lover as the bride-to-be moved in -- I couldn’t believe that it had seemed like a feasible idea to Mitch: the three of us sitting down to dine together, least of all under his roof.  The marriage is in name only, Mitch, I offered. I’m not making any sort of claims on you.

It wouldn’t look right for him to stay here. Jim and I have both agreed on that.

Jim grunted doubtfully.

Mitch poured a tasteful half-glass of champagne into each of our waiting glasses. By candlelight, the golden bubbles looked almost as promising as they had in the old days, when champagne itself was full of the prospects of unimaginable decadence. The glasses were a geometric delight; half-moons of etched crystal perched on unusually long cobalt blue pyramid stems, lovingly carted home from Paris by Mitch several years earlier. He’d selected the glasses carefully and, like all the other valuable items in his home, he treasured them as much for their actual value as for the memories they held.

I remembered that trip to Paris quite well. Not that Mitch and I had made the trip together; I’d been traveling as an employee of the Valentinos, at the height of Rudy’s fame at Paramount. We ran into Mitch and his then-paramour Max at the Ritz, and then, whenever Natacha was willing to give me three seconds off from the constant tending to her endless trunks and toiletries, not to mention her unpredictable libido, I palled around Paris’s chic boulevards with Mitch and Max and had a splendid time. Max had been much friendlier, less possessive than Jim Temple could ever be.

Our starry-eyed dreamer seems to have left us, Jim said.

I realized he was referring to me. I’m sorry?

Mitch asked you a question, he practically spat at me.

Why do you have to be so uncivilized? I said. It’s not like this marriage was my idea, Jim. I had no idea you were living here.

Baloney.

I turned to Mitch, wanting his support I guess, only to discover he still had that cheery expression on his face. He was entirely unperturbed; a forkful of boeuf petit duc poised to enter his mouth. He said, I only wanted to know if you’d had a chance to try on any of those dresses yet, Rose.

No, I said. I fell asleep.

Didn’t you sleep well on the train?

Off and on, I replied. But the closer we got to Hollywood, I was thinking too much about Rudy to sleep.

Mitch said, That’s certainly understandable since he was very much alive the last time you were here. And then in went the forkful of boeuf petit duc.

Would you two listen to yourselves? You make me ill. Jim drank down his half-glass of champagne in one gulp and then stood up from the table. I need some air.

Help yourself, Mitch said, still chewing the boeuf. Waving his fork, he indicated the open doors to the patio. There’s plenty of it right out there.

Jim glared at him. I detest you.

Mitch stopped chewing and swallowed. Then he set his fork in his plate. It was suddenly undeniable that he was not as cheery as he seemed. And I told you that if you intended to get thoroughly spifflicated then I had nothing more to say to you. I don’t care that I don’t need the money, I am keeping my job because I’m good at it and I like it. And if I have to marry Rosemary to keep the front office happy, then that’s what I intend to do, Jim. I never told you to sell your house, did I? That was your decision. You shouldn’t be taking this out on Rose.

Then I drank my champagne down in a gulp, too, and reached for the bottle to pour myself some more.

Without taking his eyes off Jim, Mitch placed a firm hand on the champagne bottle, keeping it securely in the sterling silver bucket. Slow down; everybody just slow down. We have a wedding to show up at tomorrow night. Then he looked at me. And no bride of mine is going to be upchucking her pretty way to the altar. Not that I would ever try to tell you what to do, Rose. But let’s have a little dignity here. Everyone’s expecting to see a happy bride.

I can’t stand this, I said.

Happy bride? Jim scoffed. Who are you trying to kid? Her reputation precedes her by several days.

Mitch stood up as if to defend my honor, which only alarmed me more. "What does that mean, Jim? Mitch -- what does he mean?"

Nothing, Rose. He’s just being vile.

Jim barked a laugh and went out to the patio.

Mitch, what have I gotten myself into?

Nothing, Rose. Just try to eat. I don’t want that champagne going to your head. Then he, too, headed for the patio. I reached for the bottle; I couldn’t help myself. Mitch must have guessed I was going to do it in spite of his warning. I filled my delicate glass with champagne, unleashing a fresh assault of memories on myself.

A Victrola out on the patio began playing I Found a Rose in the Devil’s Garden and I thought I would lose my mind