Page 3 of Glamorous Notions

Chapter 2

The next two weeks, Walter was gone all the time, auditioning, or at rehearsal, or sometimes he went out drinking with the theater company afterward.

“It’s all part of the business,” he told her. “You never know who’s going to make it and give you a leg up. I have to make friends.”

She spent her spare hours sketching, which was how she’d spent her time in Zanesville too. She’d stuffed the cardboard box beneath her bed full of her own designs. All pointless—her friends laughed at her sketches until she started to laugh too. “ No one will ever wear anything like that, Elsie ,” Mom said so often it was nearly rote. “What we need are new patterns for housedresses.” Dad said, “ Don’t be so frivolous. When the Soviets have the bomb, there won’t be any need for party gowns. ”

But if nothing else, LA gave her hundreds of ideas; she’d never felt so inspired. The limp laundry hanging in the Slavic couple’s yard prompted a bright tunic dress, the colorful scarves and blankets sold in the Mexican stalls and stores in El Pueblo—the old town across from Union Station—spurred an entire series of skirts and boleros and a conquistador trouser set that she particularly loved. The southwest corner of Sunset and Gower, where the actors gathered hoping to be noticed, provided a kaleidoscope of styles to borrow, mix, and match, and the burlesque joints on Sunset, mixing with the fancy stores and the clubs jumping with movie stars, lit fires in her head. Sometimes she went there in the evenings just to watch them arrive.

She couldn’t get her ideas down fast enough. Her sketches were strewed all over the house, much to Walter’s irritation—they had to move them to eat or sit down or even to make love. On Saturdays, when she didn’t have a shift at the café, she went to the matinee house nearby and whiled away the hours lost in the drama and glamour of old movies like Wuthering Heights and Ninotchka , Jezebel and Camille , along with B movies specializing in melodrama and mystery, The Cobra Strikes and Half Past Midnight . They fed her passion for fashion just as they had in Zanesville.

The café became the best part of her day, not just because she had people there to talk to, but also because Edendale was populated with a fascinating mix of artists and leftists and old movie stars and bohemians, some shabby, some in cashmere, some flouting every fashion convention. She began to recognize the regulars: the old man she knew only as Mr. Allen, who leashed his Great Dane out front; a woman who used to be a B movie actress, according to Anita, but who Elsie didn’t recognize, and who always ordered pancakes with peanut butter; and two men in their thirties: Harvey and Charlie, who always smiled and asked how she was doing when Elsie refilled their coffees or brought them water.

One atypical slow day Elsie took her break at the end of the counter, nursing a Coke and sketching.

Harvey called, “Elsie, what are you drawing?”

She was surprised to find that he and Charlie were watching her with interest.

“Would you like more coffee?” she asked politely. “I’ll get Jan to—”

“No, no.” Harvey waved her over. He was tall and stooped and looked like a strong wind might blow him over. His cornsilk-colored hair was so fine the pinkness of his scalp showed through it. “You look lost to the world. Charlie and I wonder what has you so rapt.”

She was used to people’s curiosity—and their uninterest when she explained her drawings. It was easier to shrug it off, which she did. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

Charlie, who was Harvey’s opposite—beefy and black Irish—grinned. “It’s not nothing if you’re concentrating so hard.”

“Charlie’s an animator at Disney. He knows concentration,” Harvey put in.

“Oh.” LA was full of people who worked for studios, but somehow she had never imagined Charlie in the industry. “Well, that’s—”

“Are you an artist?” Harvey asked.

“It’s clothes,” she said. “I like to draw clothes.”

“Now there’s art,” Charlie said—admiringly? Was that admiration? Or was he sarcastic? She was used to dismissive sarcasm, but just when she had decided that’s what it was, he said, “Bring it over. Let’s take a look.”

Harvey puffed on his cigarette and nodded. “Yes, let’s see.”

She’d never shied away from real interest, it was only that real interest had been rare. She brought over the sketchbook.

“Break’s over, Else,” Anita announced.

Harvey smiled at Elsie’s obvious dismay. “Go ahead—do you mind if we look through it without you?”

She didn’t mind, and just then a group came in and she couldn’t linger, but she couldn’t help her curiosity over Charlie and Harvey’s reaction to the sketches. They were really looking at them, she realized, not just leafing through but spending time with each one, and she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or pleased. The waiting to find out grew unbearable.

She saw them pay their bill. She didn’t think they’d leave without saying anything. But then they rose. She couldn’t step away; a couple waited for her to clear a table. Charlie set her sketchbook next to the cash register. Dirty coffee cups filled her hands. Charlie gave her a smile as he headed to the door, and a surge of desperate disappointment raced through Elsie until she realized that Harvey stood right behind her.

“You’ve a gift,” he said to her. “Can you come over when you get off work? We’re only a few blocks away. Come and have a beer. We want to talk to you about your work.”

She didn’t know them except from the café. Walter would not like the idea at all. They could be kidnappers or ... murderers. She’d heard about that Black Dahlia murder last year. It was still unsolved. People were still jumpy about it.

“We have no nefarious intentions.” It was as if Harvey had read her mind. He grinned as he put a piece of paper into her apron pocket. “Come or not, as you like.”

He followed Charlie out the door.

Elsie had no time to think about it further. She was swept into the chaos of the café lunch hour. But when her shift ended, and she retrieved her sketchbook and pulled the piece of paper from her pocket, she saw it was their address. “We have no nefarious intentions ...” Sure, but wasn’t that what a murderer would say even if he did? Elsie thought of how thoroughly they’d looked through her sketches. They wanted to talk to her about her work, and she wanted to hear what they had to say—she yearned to hear it. Charlie was an animator at Disney. An artist.

Elsie went to Anita, who was slicing a cherry pie. “Harvey and Charlie asked me to come over for a beer. Do you think that’s all right?”

Anita looked surprised. “Did they? Well, I’ve never known them to do that before.”

“Do you think I’d be in any danger?”

“Only of being talked to death. Or maybe recruited. They’re active with the CRC, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“The Civil Rights Congress. They want equal rights for Negroes.” Anita leaned close. “The rumor is that those two hold Communist Party meetings as well, but I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Oh.” Elsie frowned. She didn’t want to mess around with anything like that, but as long as she didn’t attend those meetings, what did it matter?

She glanced at the address Harvey had given her and then at the clock on the diner wall. Walter wouldn’t be home for hours. She had time, and her curiosity won out. She would go.

Their house was small, a yellow stuccoed Spanish-style bungalow with a red roof and an overgrown pink bougainvillea weighing down a tumbling side fence. Charlie answered her knock with a smile and “You came!” He ushered her in. Harvey was already approaching with a beer.

“As you can see, we’re perfectly normal.” He handed her the beer and gestured about the room. Bookshelves laden with books— The Atomic Age Opens prominently displayed—lined a wall next to a red chenille sofa. Armchairs in multicolored floral flanked the fireplace. They’d hung posters—one of a Picasso exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a movie poster for The Grapes of Wrath , as well as a framed autographed photo of Dorothy Dandridge. It was a comfortable room.

“Oh, we’re much more interesting than normal,” Charlie said. “Sit down, sit down! Tell us about yourself. Are you from LA?”

“God, is anyone from LA?” Harvey teased.

Elsie sat on the red chenille sofa. Harvey grabbed two more beers, and he and Charlie listened intently as she told them about coming from Ohio with Walter, and how her husband was going to be famous someday and she was just working until he made it.

“What about you?” Charlie asked.

“Me?”

“Don’t you have ambitions for yourself?”

“I—um . . .”

“Your sketches are amazing.” Charlie looked at Harvey, who nodded.

“Fantastic.” Harvey held out his hand for her sketchbook. “Look at these, they’re gorgeous!”

He had turned to what she thought of as her “bird designs,” the cardinal-inspired trouser ensemble with its little tufted hat, the blue jay gown, the crow dress with its bustle-like back of pleated and layered tulle.

“I can’t believe you got away with this in Ohio,” Charlie said, pointing to a slinky sheath with scrolling up the sides and beneath the breasts, meant to enhance and allure.

“I didn’t,” she said. “I never made it. My mother said it was obscene.”

“It would be a crime for you not to go to Chouinard.”

“What’s Chouinard?”

“An art school. It’s where I studied animation. But they teach fashion illustration and costume design too. I can give you a letter of recommendation if you want, but you won’t need it. Not once they see this.”

“It’s here? In LA?” she asked.

Charlie nodded. “Over in Westlake.”

An art school. It was something Elsie had never imagined. She hadn’t even known there was such a thing. A school that taught fashion? It sounded impossible. “You mean they teach this?”

“You could be a fashion designer, Elsie,” Charlie said. “My God, you have the talent.”

“And they let women in?”

“They do, though right now GIs have priority. But it would be a crime for you not to go.”

She could not be still. It was alarming how much wanting could bloom so quickly. It threatened to eclipse her. Fashion design, school ... in Zanesville she’d never dreamed so big. Taking over her mother’s shop one day had been her only expectation. She’d never imagined it was even possible for her to be a ... fashion designer —the words held worlds within them, and those worlds left her breathless.

“A few years at Chouinard ...,” Charlie went on.

A few years . . .

Elsie’s excitement died. She hadn’t thought about Walter. Walter, who had to agree. Walter, who had to want this for her too. And the money ...

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Charlie asked.

“I have to talk to Walter. This wasn’t our plan.”

“Plans change,” Harvey said. “Tell him you have a recommendation from a Disney man. That should convince him.”

Yes, of course, Harvey was right. She and Walter had never talked about it. He liked the dresses she wore—it was what had drawn him to her in the beginning. Why wouldn’t he like an idea that might make her famous too?

She left half-drunk, elated, though when she got home her doubts returned. After all, despite Walter liking her dresses, he’d seen her sketches and never mentioned the potential Harvey and Charlie said she had.

She waited up for him, her sketchbook on her lap, nervous but determined.

Walt came home late and sauced. “What are you doing on the couch?”

She rubbed her eyes. “I was waiting for you.”

“The play’s coming together. You should have seen us tonight, the whole thing really just gelled, you know? It’s going to be great, and I was talking to the fellas tonight and I had this idea to send out flyers to the movie producers. You know, announcing my debut. Inviting them all to come.” He was talking fast, excited. He pulled her from the sofa and up the stairs to the bedroom in a flurry of talk.

“Wait—Walt, today I met these two men ... well, I knew them before, but—”

“What?” He frowned at her in confusion. “What two men? What are you talking about?”

“At the café. Harvey and Charlie. Charlie’s an animator at Disney.”

“I heard Disney is full of commies.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Walter shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Look, baby, you’re home all day. You don’t hear the things I do.”

“I’m at the café. I hear about things. Like the CRC.” She wasn’t sure why she said it except that his condescension irritated her.

“The CRC? Where did you hear about that? Are these guys part of that?” Walter looked worried now. “You stay far away from them. You should report them.”

“Report them to who?”

“The FBI, I don’t know.”

“How would I even talk to the FBI?”

“I don’t know.” He took off his shirt. “You don’t want to be anywhere near those crazies, Elsie.” He took off his pants and his underwear, then crawled naked between the sheets. “Like I said, communists. Stop talking about that kind of crap and come to bed.”

“They saw my sketches and they think—”

“Who saw your sketches?”

“Charlie and Harvey.”

“The commies?”

“Charlie thinks I have talent. He thinks I should go to art school.”

“Art school?” Walter looked surprised. “Why?”

“He thinks I could be a fashion designer.”

“Why would you want to be that? I thought you hated your mom’s business.”

“Well, no. I mean, I did, but—”

“Besides, the wife of a famous actor can’t be making dresses. She has her dresses made, by that Flabioso—”

“Flavio.”

“Yeah. It’s not what we planned, baby. You’ll be too busy shopping and having babies and looking gorgeous as the wife of Walt Maynard. Which reminds me ...”

He went back to the play, and how he’d discovered a perfect mannerism for his character that really made everything work —it was the answer he’d been looking for; he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before, everyone commented on it.

“Bernard told me I had it in me to be a movie star like Rudolph Valentino.”

“Rudolph Valentino? But ... he’s so old fashioned.”

“It was a compliment.” Walter was obviously stung. “He meant that I should be a leading man like that. He said I should think about going to that place called the Actors’ Laboratory over on Laurel.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Elsie said.

“They’re doing interesting stuff over there. Training actors in the new styles coming from New York City. Now that you have that job, I might look into it.”

Elsie’s heart sank.

“Maybe you could get a few more hours. What do you think?”

“Sure,” Elsie said. “Sure.”

He sighed with happiness. “It’s all turning around, baby. We’ll be in Photoplay before you know it.”