A Stranger in the Mirror

chapter 20
Hollywood was more exciting than Jill Castle had ever dreamed. She went on sightseeing tours and saw the outside of the stars' homes. And she knew that one day she would have a beautiful home in Bel-Air or Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, Jill lived in an old roominghouse, an ugly two-story wooden structure that had been converted into an even uglier twelve-bedroom house with tiny bedrooms. Her room was inexpensive, which meant that she could stretch out the two hundred dollars she had saved up. The house was located on Bronson, a few minutes from Hollywood and Vine streets, the heart of Hollywood, and was convenient to the motion-picture studios.

There was another feature about the house that attracted Jill. There were a dozen roomers, and all of them were either trying to get into pictures, were working in pictures as extras or bit players or had retired from the Business. The old-timers floated around the house in yellowed robes and curlers, frayed suits and scuffed shoes that would no longer take a shine. The roomers looked used up, rather than old. There was a common living room with battered and sprung furniture where they all gathered in the evening to exchange gossip. Everyone gave Jill advice, most of it contradictory.

"The way to get into pictures, honey, is you find yourself an AD who likes you." This from a sour-faced lady who had recently been fired from a television series.

"What's an AD?" Jill asked.

"An assistant director." In a tone that pitied Jill's ignorance. "He's the one who hires the supes."

Jill was too embarrassed to ask what the "supes" were.

"If you want my advice, you'll find yourself a horny casting director. An AD can only use you on his picture. A casting director can put you into everything." This from a toothless woman who must have been in her eighties.

"Yeah? Most of them are fags." A balding character actor.

"What's the difference? I mean, if it gets one launched?" An intense, bespectacled young man who burned to be a writer.

"What about starting out as an extra?" Jill asked. "Central Casting - "

"Forget it. Central Casting's books are closed. They won't even register you unless you're a specialty."

"I'm - I'm sorry. What's a specialty?"

"It's like if you're an amputee. That pays thirty-three fifty-eight instead of the regular twenty-one fifty. Or if you own dinner clothes or can ride a horse, you make twenty-eight thirty-three. If you know how to deal cards or handle the stick at a crap table, that's twenty-eight thirty-three. If you can play football or baseball, that pays thirty-three fifty-eight - same as an amputee. If you ride a camel or an elephant, it's fifty-five ninety-four. Take my advice, forget about being an extra. Go for a bit part."

"I'm not sure what the difference is," Jill confessed.

"A bit player's got at least one line to say. Extras ain't allowed to talk, except the omnies."

"The what?"

"The omnies - the ones who make background noises."

"First thing you gotta do is get yourself an agent."

"How do I find one?"

"They're listed in the Screen Actor. That's the magazine the Screen Actors Guild puts out. I got a copy in my room. I'll get it."

They all looked through the list of agents with Jill, and finally narrowed it down to a dozen of the smaller ones. The consensus of opinion was that Jill would not have a chance at a large agency.

Armed with the list, Jill began to make the rounds. The first six agents would not even talk to her. She ran into the seventh as he was leaving his office.

"Excuse me," Jill said. "I'm looking for an agent."

He eyed her a moment and said, "Let's see your portfolio."

She stared at him blankly. "My what?"

"You must have just gotten off the bus. You can't operate in this town without a book. Get some pictures taken. Different poses. Glamour stuff. Tits and ass."

Jill found a photographer in Culver City near the David Selznick Studios, who did her portfolio for thirty-five dollars. She picked up the pictures a week later and was very pleased with them. She looked beautiful. All of her moods had been captured by the camera. She was pensive...angry...loving...sexy. The photographer had bound the pictures together in a book with looseleaf cellophane pages.

"At the front here," he explained, "you put your acting credits."

Credits. That was the next step.

By the end of the next two weeks, Jill had seen, or tried to see, every agent on her list. None of them was remotely interested. One of them told her, "You were in here yesterday, honey."

She shook her head. "No, I wasn't."

"Well, she looked exactly like you. That's the problem. You all look like Elizabeth Taylor or Lana Turner or Ava Gardner. If you were in any other town trying to get a job in any other business, everybody would grab you. You're beautiful, you're sexy-looking, and you've got a great figure. But in Hollywood, looks are a drug on the market. Beautiful girls come here from all over the world. They starred in their high school play or they won a beauty contest or their boyfriend told them they ought to be in pictures - and whammo! They flock here by the thousands, and they're all the same girl. Believe me, honey, you were in here yesterday."

The boarders helped Jill make a new list of agents. Their offices were smaller and the locations were in the cheap-rent district, but the results were the same.

"Come back when you've got some acting experience, kid. You're a looker, and for all I know you could be the greatest thing since Garbo, but I can't waste my time finding out. You go get yourself a screen credit and I'll be your agent."

"How can I get a screen credit if no one will give me a job?"

He nodded. "Yeah. That's the problem. Lots of luck."

There was only one agency left on Jill's list, recommended by a girl she had sat next to at the Mayflower Coffee Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. The Dunning Agency was located in a small bungalow off La Cienega in a residential area. Jill had telephoned for an appointment, and a woman had told her to come in at six o'clock.

Jill found herself in a small office that had once been someone's living room. There was an old scarred desk littered with papers, a fake-leather couch mended with white surgical tape and three rattan chairs scattered around the room. A tall, heavyset woman with a pockmarked face came out of another room and said, "Hello. Can I help you?"

"I'm Jill Castle. I have an appointment to see Mr. Dunning."

"Miss Dunning," the woman said. "That's me."

"Oh," said Jill, in surprise. "I'm sorry, I thought - "

The woman's laugh was warm and friendly. "It doesn't matter."

But it does matter, Jill thought, filled with a sudden excitement. Why hadn't it occurred to her before? A woman agent! Someone who had gone through all the traumas, someone who would understand what it was like for a young girl just starting out. She would be more sympathetic than any man could ever be.

"I see you brought your portfolio," Miss Dunning was saying. "May I look at it?"

"Certainly," Jill said. She handed it over.

The woman sat down, opened the portfolio and began to turn the pages, nodding approval. "The camera likes you."

Jill did not know what to say. "Thank you."

The agent studied the pictures of Jill in a bathing suit. "You've got a good figure. That's important. Where you from?"

"Texas," Jill said. "Odessa."

"How long have you been in Hollywood, Jill?"

"About two months."

"How many agents have you been to?"

For an instant, Jill was tempted to lie, but there was nothing but compassion and understanding in the woman's eyes. "About thirty, I guess."

The agent laughed. "So you finally got down to Rose Dunning. Well, you could have done worse. I'm not MCA or William Morris, but I keep my people working."

"I haven't had any acting experience."

The woman nodded, unsurprised. "If you had, you'd be at MCA or William Morris. I'm a kind of breaking-in station. I get the kids with talent started, and then the big agencies snatch them away from me."

For the first time in weeks, Jill began to feel a sense of hope. "Do - do you think you'd be interested in handling me?" she asked.

The woman smiled. "I have clients working who aren't half as pretty as you. I think I can put you to work. That's the only way you'll ever get experience, right?"

Jill felt a glow of gratitude.

"The trouble with this damned town is that they won't give kids like you a chance. All the studios scream that they're desperate for new talent, and then they put up a big wall and won't let anybody in. Well, we'll fool 'em. I know of three things you might be right for. A daytime soap, a bit in the Toby Temple picture and a part in the new Tessie Brand movie."

Jill's head was spinning. "But would they - "

"If I recommend you, they'll take you. I don't send clients who aren't good. They're just bit parts, you understand, but it will be a start."

"I can't tell you how grateful I'd be," Jill said.

"I think I've got the soap-opera script here." Rose Dunning lumbered to her feet, pushing herself out of her chair, and walked into the next room, beckoning Jill to follow her.

The room was a bedroom with a double bed in a corner under a window and a metal filing cabinet in the opposite corner. Rose Dunning waddled over to the filing cabinet, opened a drawer, took out a script and brought it over to Jill.

"Here we are. The casting director is a good friend of mine, and if you come through on this, he'll keep you busy."

"I'll come through," Jill promised fervently.

The agent smiled and said, "Course, I can't send over a pig in a poke. Would you mind reading for me?"

"No. Certainly not."

The agent opened the script and sat down on the bed. "Let's read this scene."

Jill sat on the bed next to her and looked at the script.

"Your character is Natalie. She's a rich girl who's married to a weakling. She decides to divorce him, and he won't let her. You make your entrance here."

Jill quickly scanned the scene. She wished she had had a chance to study the script overnight or even for an hour. She was desperately anxious to make a good impression.

"Ready?"

"I - I think so," Jill said. She closed her eyes and tried to think like the character. A rich woman. Like the mothers of the friends that she had grown up with, people who took it for granted that they could have anything they wanted in life, believing that other people were there for their convenience. The Cissy Toppings of the world. She opened her eyes, looked down at the script and began to read. "I want to talk to you, Peter."

"Can't it wait?" That was Rose Dunning, cueing her.

"I'm afraid it's waited too long already. I'm catching a plane for Reno this afternoon."

"Just like that?"

"No. I've been trying to catch that plane for five years, Peter. This time I'm going to make it."

Jill felt Rose Dunning's hand patting her thigh. "That's very good," the agent said, approvingly. "Keep reading." She let her hand rest on Jill's leg.

"Your problem is that you haven't grown up yet. You're still playing games. Well, from now on, you're going to have to play by yourself."

Rose Dunning's hand was stroking her thigh. It was disconcerting. "Fine. Go on," she said.

"I - I don't want you to try to get in touch with me ever again. Is that quite clear?"

The hand was stroking Jill faster, moving toward her groin. Jill lowered the script and looked at Rose Dunning. The woman's face was flushed and her eyes had a glazed look in them.

"Keep reading," she said huskily.

"I - I can't," Jill said. "If you - "

The woman's hand began to move faster. "This is to get you in the mood, darling. It's a sexual fight, you see. I want to feel the sex in you." Her hand was pressing harder now, moving between Jill's legs.

"No!" Jill got to her feet, trembling.

Saliva was dribbling out of the corner of the woman's mouth. "Be good to me and I'll be good to you." Her voice was pleading. "Come here, baby." She held out her arms and made a grab for her, and Jill ran out of the office.

In the street outside, she vomited. Even when the wracking spasms were over and her stomach had quieted down, she felt no better. Her headache had started again.

It was not fair. The headaches didn't belong to her. They belonged to Josephine Czinski.

During the next fifteen months, Jill Castle became a full-fledged member of the Survivors, the tribe of people on the fringes of show business who spent years and sometimes a whole lifetime trying to break into the Business, working at other jobs temporarily. The fact that the temporary jobs sometimes lasted ten or fifteen years did not discourage them.

As ancient tribes once sat around long-ago campfires and recounted sagas of brave deeds, so the Survivors sat around Schwab's Drugstore, telling and retelling heroic tales of show business, nursing cups of cold coffee while they exchanged the latest bits of inside gossip. They were outside the Business, and yet, in some mysterious fashion, they were at the very pulse and heartbeat of it. They could tell you what star was going to be replaced, what producer had been caught sleeping with his director, what network head was about to be kicked upstairs. They knew these things before anyone else did, through their own special kind of jungle drums. For the Business was a jungle. They had no illusions about that. Their illusions lay in another direction. They thought they could find a way to get through the studio gates, scale the studio walls. They were artists, they were the Chosen. Hollywood was their Jericho and Joshua would blow his golden trumpet and the mighty gates would fall before them and their enemies would be smitten, and lo, Sam Winters's magic wand would be waved and they would be wearing silken robes and be Movie Stars and adored ever after by their grateful public, Amen. The coffee at Schwab's was heady sacramental wine, and they were the Disciples of the future, huddling together for comfort, warming one another with their dreams, on the very brink of making it. They had met an assistant director who told them a producer who said a casting director who promised and any second now, and the reality would be in their grasp.

In the meantime, they worked in supermarkets and garages and beauty parlors and car washes. They lived with each other and married each other and divorced each other, and they never noticed how time was betraying them. They were unaware of the new lines and the graying temples, and the fact that it took half an hour longer in the morning to put on makeup. They had become shopworn without having been used, aged without mellowing, too old for a career with a plastics company, too old to have babies, too old for those younger parts once so coveted.

They were now character actors. But they still dreamed.

The younger and prettier girls were picking up what they called mattress money.

"Why break your ass over some nine-to-five job when all you have to do is lay on your back a few minutes and pick up an easy twenty bucks? Just till your agent calls."

Jill was not interested. Her only interest in life was her career. A poor Polish girl could never marry a David Kenyon. She knew that now. But Jill Castle, the movie star, could have anybody and anything she wanted. Unless she could achieve that, she would change back into Josephine Czinski again.

She would never let that happen.

Jill's first acting job came through Harriet Marcus, one of the Survivors who had a third cousin whose ex-brother-in-law was a second assistant director on a television medical series shooting at Universal Studios. He agreed to give Jill a chance. The part consisted of one line, for which Jill was to receive fifty-seven dollars, minus deductions for Social Security, withholding taxes and the Motion Picture Relief Home. Jill was to play the part of a nurse. The script called for her to be in a hospital room at a patient's bedside, taking his pulse when the doctor entered.

DOCTOR: "How is he, Nurse?"

NURSE: "Not very good, I'm afraid, Doctor."

That was it.

Jill was given a single, mimeographed page from the script on a Monday afternoon and told to report for makeup at six A.M. the following morning. She went over the scene a hundred times. She wished the studio had given her the entire script. How did they expect her to figure out what the character was like from one page? Jill tried to analyze what kind of a woman the nurse might be. Was she married? Single? She could be secretly in love with the doctor. Or maybe they had had an affair and it was over. How did she feel about the patient? Did she hate the thought of his death? Or would it be a blessing?

"Not very good, I'm afraid, Doctor." She tried to put concern in her voice.

She tried again. "Not very good. I'm afraid, Doctor." Alarmed. He was going to die.

"Not very good, I'm afraid, Doctor." Accusing. It was the doctor's fault. If he had not been away with his mistress...

Jill stayed up the entire night working on the part, too keyed-up to sleep, but in the morning, when she reported to the studio, she felt exhilarated and alive. It was still dark when she arrived at the guard's gate off Lankershim Boulevard, in a car borrowed from her friend Harriet. Jill gave the guard her name, and he checked it against a roster and waved her on.

"Stage Seven," he said. "Two blocks down, turn right."

Her name was on the roster. Universal Studios was expecting her. It was like a wonderful dream. As Jill drove toward the sound stage, she decided she would discuss the part with the director, let him know that she was capable of giving him any interpretation he wanted. Jill pulled into the large parking lot and went onto Stage Seven.

The sound stage was crowded with people busily moving lights, carrying electrical equipment, setting up the camera, giving orders in a foreign language she did not understand. "Hit the inky dink and give me a brute.... I need a scrim here.... Kill the baby...."

Jill stood there watching, savoring the sights and smells and sounds of show business. This was her world, her future. She would find a way to impress the director, show him that she was someone special. He would get to know her as a person, not as just another actress.

The second assistant director herded Jill and a dozen other actors over to Wardrobe, where Jill was handed a nurse's uniform and sent back to the sound stage, where she was made up with all the other bit players in a corner of the sound stage. Just as they were finished with her, the assistant director called her name. Jill hurried on to the hospital-room set where the director stood near the camera, talking to the star of the series. The star's name was Rod Hanson, and he played a surgeon full of compassion and wisdom. As Jill approached them, Rod Hanson was saying, "I have a German shepherd that can fart better dialogue than this shit. Why can't the writers give me some character, for Christ's sake?"

"Rod, we've been on the air five years. Don't improve a hit. The public loves you the way you are."

The cameraman walked up to the director. "All lit, chief."

"Thanks, Hal," the director said. He turned to Rod Hanson. "Can we make this, baby? We'll finish the discussion later."

"One of these days, I'm going to wipe my ass with this studio," Hanson snapped. He strode away.

Jill turned to the director, who was now alone. This was her opportunity to discuss the interpretation of the character, to show him that she understood his problems and was there to help make the scene great. She gave him a warm, friendly smile. "I'm Jill Castle," she said. "I'm playing the nurse. I think she can really be very interesting and I have some ideas about - "

He nodded absently and said, "Over by the bed," and walked away to speak to the cameraman.

Jill stood looking after him, stunned. The second assistant director, Harriet's third cousin's ex-brother-in-law, hurried up to Jill and said in a low voice, "For Chrissakes, didn't you hear him? Over by the bed!"

"I wanted to ask him - "

"Don't blow it!" he whispered fiercely. "Get out there!"

Jill walked over to the patient's bed.

"All right. Let's have it quiet, everybody." The assistant director looked at the director. "Do you want a rehearsal, chief?"

"For this? Let's go for a take."

"Give us a bell. Settle down, everybody. Nice and quiet. We're rolling. Speed."

Unbelievingly, Jill listened to the sound of the bell. She looked frantically toward the director, wanting to ask him how he would like her to interpret the scene, what her relationship was to the dying man, what she was -

A voice called, "Action!"

They were all looking at Jill expectantly. She wondered whether she dare ask them to stop the cameras for just a second, so she could discuss the scene and -

The director yelled, "Jesus Christ! Nurse! This isn't a morgue - it's a hospital. Feel his goddamned pulse before he dies of old age!"

Jill looked anxiously into the circle of bright lights around her. She took a deep breath, lifted the patient's hand and took his pulse. If they would not help her, she would have to interpret the scene in her own way. The patient was the father of the doctor. The two of them had quarreled. The father had been in an accident and the doctor had just been notified. Jill looked up and saw Rod Hanson approaching. He walked up to her and said, "How is he, Nurse?"

Jill looked into the doctor's eyes and read the concern there. She wanted to tell him the truth, that his father was dying, that it was too late for them to make up their quarrel. Yet she had to break it to him in such a way that it would not destroy him and -

The director was yelling, "Cut! Cut! Cut! Goddamn it, the idiot's got one line, and she can't even remember it. Where did you find her - in the Yellow Pages?"

Jill turned toward the voice shouting from the darkness, aflame with embarrassment. "I - I know my line," she said shakily. "I was just trying to - "

"Well, if you know it, for Chrissakes, would you mind saying it? You could drive a train through that pause. When he asks you the f*cking question, answer it. Okay?"

"I was just wondering if I should - "

"Let's go again, right away. Give us a bell."

"We're on a bell. Hold it down. We're rolling."

"Speed."

"Action."

Jill's legs were trembling. It was as though she was the only one here who cared about the scene. All she had wanted to do was create something beautiful. The hot lights were making her dizzy, and she could feel the perspiration running down her arms ruining the crisp, starched uniform.

"Action! Nurse!"

Jill stood over the patient and put her hand on his pulse. If she did the scene wrong again, they would never give her another chance. She thought of Harriet and of her friends at the roominghouse and of what they would say.

The doctor entered and walked up to her. "How is he, Nurse?"

She would no longer be one of them. She would be a laughingstock. Hollywood was a small town. Word got around fast.

"Not very good, I'm afraid, Doctor."

No other studio would touch her. It would be her last job. It would be the end of everything, her whole world.

The doctor said, "I want this man put in intensive care immediately."

"Good!" the director called. "Cut and print."

Jill was hardly aware of the people rushing past her, starting to dismantle the set to make room for the next one. She had done her first scene - and she had been thinking about something else. She could not believe it was over. She wondered whether she should find the director and thank him for the opportunity, but he was at the other end of the stage talking to a group of people. The second assistant director came up to her and squeezed her arm and said, "You did okay, kid. Only next time, learn your lines."

There was film on her; she had her first credit.

From now on

, Jill thought,

I'll be working all the time

.

Jill's next acting job was thirteen months later, when she did a bit part at MGM. In the meantime, she held a series of civilian jobs. She became the local Avon lady, she worked behind a soda fountain and - briefly - she drove a taxi.

With her money running low, Jill decided to share an apartment with Harriet Marcus. It was a two-bedroom apartment and Harriet kept her bedroom working overtime. Harriet worked at a downtown department store as a model. She was an attractive girl with short dark hair, black eyes, a model's boyish figure and a sense of humor.

"When you come from Hoboken," she told Jill, "you'd better have a sense of humor."

In the beginning, Jill had been a bit daunted by Harriet's cool self-sufficiency, but she soon learned that underneath that sophisticated facade, Harriet was a warm, frightened child. She was in love constantly. The first time Jill met her, Harriet said, "I want you to meet Ralph. We're getting married next month."

A week later, Ralph had left for parts unknown, taking with him Harriet's car.

A few days after Ralph had departed, Harriet met Tony. He was in import-export and Harriet was head-over-heels in love with him.

"He's very important," Harriet confided to Jill. But someone obviously did not think so, because a month later, Tony was found floating in the Los Angeles River with an apple stuffed in his mouth.

Alex was Harriet's next love.

"He's the best-looking thing you've ever seen," Harriet confided to Jill.

Alex was handsome. He dressed in expensive clothes, drove a flashy convertible and spent a lot of time at the racetracks. The romance lasted until Harriet started running out of money. It angered Jill that Harriet had so little sense about men.

"I can't help it," Harriet confessed. "I'm attracted to guys who are in trouble. I think it's my mother instinct." She grinned and added, "My mother was an idiot."

Jill watched a procession of Harriet's fiances come and go. There was Nick and Bobby and John and Raymond, until finally Jill could no longer keep track of them.

A few months after they had moved in together, Harriet announced that she was pregnant.

"I think it's Leonard," she quipped, "but you know - they all look alike in the dark."

"Where is Leonard?"

"He's either in Omaha or Okinawa. I always was lousy at geography."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to have my baby."

Because of her slight figure, Harriet's pregnancy became obvious in a matter of weeks and she had to give up her modeling job. Jill found a job in a supermarket so that she could support the two of them.

One afternoon when Jill returned home from work, she found a note from Harriet. It read: "I've always wanted my baby to be born in Hoboken. Have gone back home to my folks. I'll bet there's a wonderful guy there, waiting for me. Thanks for everything." It was signed: "Harriet, The Nun."

The apartment had suddenly become a lonely place.