Flicker (47 page)

What kept me from that utterly sensible act? A memory that I knew would stay with me always. Rosenzweig's face. The shock, then helpless anguish that filled his eyes when I mentioned Max Castle's name. In that instant, the man's madness gave way to a pathos that cried from inside him like the voice of some still-sane creature imprisoned in the depths of a deranged mind. What was that last lucid fragment of Rosenzweig struggling to tell me?

I always thought Marlene Dietrich held the world's record for feminine erotic durability, still playing the cabaret vamp into her sixties. Olga Tell, were she still on the screen when I met her, would have made a worthy challenger. I estimated she must be pushing seventy; but the woman seated across from me that afternoon in Amsterdam, though she showed not a trace of makeup or surgical intervention that I could detect, might have been the daughter of the actress I'd come to see. Her hair, straight and flowing the length of her spine, had been allowed to go natural steel-gray; there were even undisguised webs of wrinkles in the still resilient skin at the corners of her eyes and mouth. But every gesture—the easy sway in her hips when she walked, the girlish movement that swept her hair back at the shoulders, the way she crossed her still shapely legs—had the fluidity of youth.

In her golden days, Hollywood had billed Olga as a great “natural beauty.” For once the publicity was matched by the truth. Thirty-some years after her last movie, this was still a superbly handsome woman, and without the aid of special lighting. The sheer, clinging silk robe she wore helped with the impression. All the while we chatted, she kept passing in and out of focus: old, not-old, old, not-old … but whichever she might seem at the moment, there was an air of casual sexual magnetism surrounding her that both attracted and unsettled. Unsettled, because I'd never experienced such a thing as grandmotherly sexuality. Yet here it was, not three feet away from me emanating from this tall (nearly six feet), still buxom woman, who was playing torrid love scenes when my mother was a schoolgirl.

I came to Amsterdam expecting it to be the most rewarding part of my brief European tour. After the agony of facing Saint-Cyr the egomaniac and Rosenzweig the crackpot—plus several scattered days running down private collectors here and there that had yielded precisely nothing—Olga Tell was bound to be a refreshing change for the better. At least so I judged from her letters, which had continued
to be cordial and forthcoming. She showed every sign of wanting to help with my study of Castle, for whom I gathered she still nursed tender feelings.

I'd allowed myself two days in the city, asking in advance that Olga set up a screening of the Castle film she owned. Enough time, I imagined, to view the film, arrange for a copy to be made, and interview Olga. I never would have guessed that what she had to tell me about Castle would be more than my eyes and ears and a notebook could take away.

Olga was clearly a woman of means. Her name now was Van Cuypers. Marriage into old mercantile wealth had brought with it the Van Cuypers house, famous throughout the city as one of Amsterdam's stately homes. It was a high, slender gingerbread mansion that dominated the “Golden Bend” of the Herengracht, the most elegant of the town's canals. While the house had been many times richly renovated, it preserved much of its original seventeenth century marble and plasterwork. The ceilings sported rather awful but obviously costly baroque paintings of cavorting nymphs and satyrs. Why had she settled in Holland, I asked, making small talk while Olga served me hot chocolate and cookies on our first meeting. “It is where I was born and raised,” she answered. “My homeland.”

“Oh, I thought …”

“You thought I was German, yes? You were supposed to. For the studios in my time, German was sexy. You know—Berlin, the twenties, lowlife, decadence. Also Scandinavian was sexy—like Garbo, you see. Even Polish. Pola Negri. But a Dutch girl? Think of Holland, what do you see? Wooden shoes and windmills, yes? Dutch meant cheese and chocolate and the good little boy putting his finger in the dike. Wholesome. Too wholesome. So when I go to Hollywood, your Mr. Goldwyn decides that Ulrika Van Till should become Olga Tell. And then he makes up a whole silly story about me. How I was discovered in a cabaret in Berlin dancing naked. A real floozy. Like in
The Blue Angel,
you remember? Even after the talkies came, a Dutch accent you could mistake for German.

“But you see … ” she gestured toward a photograph on the mantelpiece that had already caught my eye: a magnificent young woman, blond and glowing—Olga in her glory days fifty years before, posed somewhere on a beach, tall and proud on tiptoe, hands on hips, and completely nude. “… it was my great problem. A big, strapping farm girl I was, good bones, good muscles, raised like a workhorse.
What they wanted was vamps,
femmes fatales.
Maybe a little anemic, a little sunken in the chest—like Garbo. Underfed, pale. A life of sin written all over. Ingrid Bergman—she had the same trouble later on. Too big, too healthy. But for her they found saints and nuns to play. For me, it was always scarlet women. But I just wasn't a scarlet woman. It wasn't in me. I took off more clothes in front of the camera than anyone. Oh, I was so brazen. I wanted to be a big star, you see, so I followed orders. Hedy Lamarr in
Ecstasy
—you saw that maybe? Ha! What a sensation they made of her. That skinny little girl, what did she have to show? I did naked swimming, naked bathtub, naked in the woods. But who noticed? I wasn't ashamed to show my body. It was a pretty body. Did it give me a reputation? Dietrich—she showed two inches above her knee, it was a scandal. Me—nobody could believe I was a shady lady. I couldn't believe it myself.

“That was the trouble. I couldn't take myself seriously. God knows I tried to become a fallen woman. Off the screen, I was what you called hell on wheels. I
vluggert
every leading man I acted with. It's so. Every director. Every producer. It did no good. Max once told me, ‘Olga, even with all your clothes off, you're still a milkmaid. Fornication with you is just good clean fun.' He said, ‘You're the one Dutchman Calvin didn't get.' He was right. I had no shame. Without shame, how can there be any sin? Maybe Mr. Goldwyn got me all wrong. I wasn't Dietrich. I was Mae West. Just a good-time girl.”

Since she seemed so willing to talk about it, I asked her, “Did Max Castle ever want you to do any really
very
sexy scenes? I mean the sort of thing they wouldn't show in a movie? There's a reel of film I have … extra material from one of his movies. It's rather … well, extreme.”

She laughed. “With Max, there was always something extra. Not in the script. A little spook show, sometimes, yes, some blue scenes. What for, I don't know; he wasn't in the business. Sure. We did it for … how would you say, ‘the kicks.' Sometimes he paid a little extra. But he made it like a big party. Max could put on a great party. Which movie you said this was?”

“Feast of the Undead.
There's a scene with you… .”

“And the bat!” She gave a whoop of recognition. “That damn silly thing! They made it all over fuzzy, this fuzzy little toy. It tickled. I was supposed to be scared to death. And all I could do was giggle. Such a morbid thing. Max could be very morbid.”

“You didn't mind doing a scene like that?”

“What did I have to lose? I was supposed to be a ‘bad girl,' wasn't I? Anyway, by then, Hollywood was finished with me. It didn't matter what I did. I was just working out my contract.”

“And the other actors, they went along too?”

“Not everybody. Most, only if Max promised not to show faces. Some, they did it for the reefers.”

“The what?”

“You never heard about reefers?”

“Well, yes. You mean … ”

“What you call now pot. So when Max asks the actors for kinky things to do, it is no, no, no. Everybody is so goody-good. But after he passes around the reefers, or some of his little happy pills, it is sure, sure, sure.”

“He used dope to get those scenes?”

“That was how he got lots of favors. He wasn't the only one, you know. It was all over town.”

“Do you know what he did with the extra film he shot?”

“Showed it at parties maybe. At all the parties they had films like that. But not so morbid as with Max.”

“You never knew he actually used the material in the movie?”

She frowned in disbelief. “No! How could he? Who would show it, a scene like that?”

“It's in the movie, but it's hidden.” I wanted to see if she followed what I had to say. She didn't.

“Hidden? Then if it is hidden, nobody can see, yes?”

“Well, you can see it … but you don't really know you see it.” She was puzzled. “It's a sort of trick.”

“Ah, Max was a great one for tricks. Especially with the lights. The flashing lights, you know.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So long ago, I can't remember. We shoot the same scene over and over. Something small. Thirty seconds. Less. Once with a fast flash, then a slower flash, then slower. Why? ‘A little trick,' Max says. So we do it. Nobody else directed like Max. Sometimes we do everything for a whole day behind a … what would you say? A veil.”

“A scrim?”

“All gauzy, like lace. We don't know why. Later, in the movie, we don't see nothing like that.” She shrugged. “With Max there was something mysterious all the time.”

“And what about
Heart of Darkness
?” I asked as casually as possible. “That was on the daring side, wasn't it?”

Up to that point, there had been a sunny air about her, a readiness to banter and laugh. Suddenly that vanished; an expression of quiet alarm flashed across her face, as if she'd felt some vital organ rupture inside. After a moment she said in a low, controlled voice, “Not nice. This I did not like.” She wasn't going to say more.

I wondered if an apology and a show of innocence might draw something more from her. I tried it. “I'm sorry. Did I say the wrong thing?”

A guarded smile came back to her lips. “With Max I did lots of not so nice things. But this was different. This was not naughty, not just ‘take off your clothes, Olga, and do a dance.' This was … different.” She paused; I waited. “This was religious.” And she would say no more.

Come back to this later
, I said to myself and allowed a long silence to settle in. Then we passed on to other, less highly charged matters. She'd put out an excellent fruity cordial. I'd downed a couple of glasses and so had she. Under its pleasant influence, we relaxed nicely into the ensuing conversation. It was midafternoon, and we were seated at the spacious front window of her home overlooking the tree-lined canal. On the sun-spangled water, small fleets of ducks drifted by and now and then the occasional barge. Everything I could see of the house, its furnishings, its
objets d'art
bespoke great wealth. After a less than brilliant film career, Olga had cashed out quite comfortably. She was willing to talk about that too.

“The contract your Mr. Goldwyn gave me—I was practically a slave,” she told me. “We young things—so greedy to be stars! We accepted whatever they gave us, the big shots. After all, we had to make good before our looks went, didn't we? How long did we have? Eight years? Ten years? Garbo was smart. She quit when she was ahead. Me too, I was smart. I quit when I was behind—way behind. When you got down to making vampire movies on the back lot, the next step was out. Out or into the gutter. But back here in Europe, I was still a glamour girl. Mr. Van Cuypers was in shipping. A great Dutch family. For him, even after the war when I wasn't no spring chicken, I was the gorgeous Olga Tell, the movie queen. So you see, Hollywood paid off very well for me.”

“He
was
in shipping? Has he retired?”

“Oh, completely. He is dead. Twelve years now.”

Somewhere in the course of that overcast and drowsy afternoon, I became aware that a flirtatious undertone had crept into our conversation, something as warm and soothing as the cordial we were sipping. For one thing, she was now sitting quite close to me on the couch and wearing one of the most intriguing perfumes I'd ever encountered. For another, the long slit at the side of her robe had fallen open at about midthigh to reveal a remarkably well-rounded leg and dimpled knee. With the exception of
Heart of Darkness,
she seemed willing to talk about anything I wanted to know, not least of all her love life. That she related with a more and more seductive lilt as time passed. I had to make a special effort—but why bother?—to remind myself that the woman was old enough to be my grandmother.

“With Max, it was always surprises. When I became his girlfriend, that was the biggest surprise. I expected exciting things. Mad passion, you know. Max had a reputation with the ladies. Ha, if only people knew what was going on!”

I wondered if she would tell me. She did.

“The first time we went to bed, you know what Max says to me? ‘Olga, guess what's more fun than sex.' The way he said it, the look he gives me … it was a little scary. You see, I was all undressed, completely ready. Not Max, just me. I always got undressed fast. You know, to get the man interested. Well, Max, he was in no hurry. He just looks and looks. I don't know why, but he makes me feel twice as naked as I ever felt in my life. And he just puts his hand right here… .” She took my hand and, being very teacherly, placed it across her lower abdomen. “What's more fun than sex?
'No sex,'
he says. I think he's joking. But he isn't. That's when I learn from him about
bhoga”

I let her know I'd never heard the word.

“You are from California, yes? I thought in California everybody would be knowing
bhoga.
With all the swamis. When I was in Hollywood, it was full of them. At every party, there was a swami.”