Kitty’s fame was a personal accomplishment, but it hadn’t done much for Blair House. There were twenty projects in preproduction at Telescope, and none of them had a Colored face in it. Kitty’s second film, like every Telescope film, featured an all-American White cast pondering their existence in an idyllic, recycled story line. Ticket sales were good; Nathan had no reason to make a change.
No one knew the extent to which Kitty’s rewriting and tweaking had gone. She’d doctored hundreds of projects at Telescope, though most would never see the light of day. Some aired, infused with her catty wit, but the two feature-length scripts that had gained Nathan’s respect were hers entirely. Still, her work was nothing without his name.
For Blair House, she had become a largely unavailable hassle. Special arrangements had to be made and planned days in advance in order for her to visit Hancock Park—for anything. The only benefit was a wider pool to plumb for donations.
Firmly cemented as a force in her own right, Kitty had expanded her circle. She and her unit frequented the homes and shows of muralists, photographers, singers, musicians, writers, and designers who couldn’t stop talking about politics, and the protests, and the violence. There was always a donation box circulating for something (along with a joint) as they listened to music, drank, and debated life until the sun came up. In these colorful spaces, Kitty felt free, able to escape her narrow black-white view. The feeling inspired her.
At first, she was enamored by the youngish rainbow tribe.
“Any encroachment on a person’s quality of life is wrong.” Tim built movie sets. His family was from Los Angeles before it was settled; he was half Tongva Indian, and all his arguments centered around religion.
Jim Crow qualified; however, he said, the problems of Negroes seemed far away from Hollywood.
“Not true. The clubs barely want brunettes, let alone Negroes.” Marie was Cuban. She and three others were recording an album and fighting their label to pay for a Spanish-language version.
“Dancing in a club is hardly the marker of the advancement of a race.”
“My wife meant, their daily lives are affected—the simple shit we do every day.” Bradley was a photographer who, before Marie and her group showed up, had come a few times with a young model.
“People just want to live in peace.”
“Wouldn’t that be a utopia.” Elaine was an East Coast Ivy Leaguer from a professorial family.
“Yes, you Americans are too cynical.” Leon was an older Italian director who smoked cigars, indoors, no matter where he was. He complained about immigration and how hard it had been for his aged mother to move to California.
One evening, they were at a book reading at Manuel’s house. Manuel was a muralist and the older brother of Julián, the Spanish novelist Kitty wanted to recruit as a writer at Telescope. Kitty was talking to him about this when three Colored entertainers walked in. She didn’t recognize them. Maude’s eyes said they weren’t friends of Blair House.
The room swirled with champagne and questions. The performers were relieved to be accepted, and the others were relieved to be trusted.
Kitty waited for the political talk to commence. Sit-ins would begin in North Carolina soon, to begin the process of desegregation in restaurants all over the South. It was all the group had talked about for weeks.
Kitty had even admitted a tiny bit of her Southern roots. I was accepted to college down there. Richard and her other classmates briefly came to mind.
I’m so glad you didn’t go, Elaine had said.
Only in private did Emma sneer that her father’s stores would eventually be affected. Holden’s was branded by a different name in the South, and each one had a lunch counter.
After an hour of casting talk that evening, Kitty realized that politics was being avoided with the inclusion of those Colored guests. The servers noticed too. Kitty watched the performers and the servers avoid each other, separated by class.
The knowing of the interworking of the room made Kitty miss Blair House. Even though she was with her unit, she felt stifled in public. There was always a writer around, ready to report her doings and sayings in the gossip columns. Maude combatted a lot of it in her own column, newly published in the Times, but Kitty was tired of having her picture in the paper. Even when she wasn’t trying, there she was.
For this reason, Kitty had started talking around Negro issues, like the creatives. They talked about the rise in student activism and the parallel anti-apartheid movement in South Africa instead of segregation in the South.
“You’re living in La-La Land, right along with Nathan.” Cora hoisted herself onto the wooden kitchen counter in Blair House. She worried that Kitty had grown lazy loving Nathan and had forgotten the real reason she was with him. It wasn’t entirely untrue. Kitty and Nathan worked hard but took many breaks, sometimes to make love or to clear their heads in Malibu, Kitty’s favorite place.
“But I don’t have anything to pitch.”
“How can that be?”
“Write something they have to hire a Negro actor for,” Cora said.
“Imitation of Life may win an award this year,” Lucy said.
“Not Best Picture.”
“But it’s the right time to push.”
“I have been!”
Lucy’s and Cora’s eyes rolled. They didn’t understand how hard it was to write in a Negro character of substance in a Telescope script. Most of the story lines would seem unrealistic, or would be altered altogether by having a Negro in a role other than that of a maid or driver. They also didn’t understand how little control she truly had. “I want to do more acting, but Nathan, I think, has a problem with me getting so much attention.”
“No man wants his woman to be a pin-up girl.”
* * *
Later that week, Kitty pushed for a scene to be added to a film called Highway. The lead actor, a hitchhiker, would take a ride from a Negro man, and they’d be pulled over by the police and experience the difference in their treatment.
“No one would believe they’d be stopped twice.”
“They would with a Negro in the car. That’s the point.”
“Honestly, beautiful”—Nathan, brushing his teeth, spit into the sink, then turned to her for a kiss—“I want to stay as far away from reality as possible.”
Kitty followed him into their bedroom. “The Negro problem is our problem. We can’t ignore what’s happening around the country—in our own city! Art is supposed to speak about the times, to mean something.”
“We could face a boycott over that.”
“Sidney Poitier was just nominated for an Oscar!”
“And he didn’t win.”
“So? He’s working; there are plenty of Negro actors who are working. No one is getting boycotted.”
“You don’t know how many sales those studios have lost because of it, do you? I assure you, if those films were popular, it wouldn’t be so hard to get one made.” He pulled on his pajama pants and began looking for his shirt.
“It’s only hard because of people like you, who can’t see the future.”
“I want to make money, not get involved in politics. People go to the movies to relax and have fun. It’s a family activity. I don’t want them leaving my movies frowning.”
“How are we supposed to advance as a society if we don’t talk about it?”
“It’s not your concern. You’re an actress; don’t make more of yourself than is necessary.”
“Last I checked, I’ve always been more than an actress. Especially to you.” She threw his nightshirt to him from the laundry basket of clothes he hadn’t put away, which was a quiet protest of her insistence that he not employ a maid.
“Yes, darling, but whether you write the script or not, I have no interest in producing a movie with Negro actors talking about Negro issues. Southerners are my best moviegoers.” He kissed her cheek, pulled back the bedcovers, and patted her side of the bed, inviting her in. “What happened to the Daisy Lawson character? Write that for yourself.”
Kitty’s heart sank at this suggested compromise, knowing his mind was already made up. Telling the story of a divorced White woman was, to him, progressive.
“Or write yourself a love story. Get more women into the theater.”
“Imitation of Life did well.”