Living With Miss G (22 page)

Not only did Spain have a continuity of sunshine that was enthralling, it
was easily the cheapest place in Europe in which to settle. You did not need a
fortune to live in a style far beyond your wildest dreams and in many cases far
beyond your behavioral standards. In other words, there were a lot of bums
around. Many of the ladies pirouetting around Miss G had never employed a
servant in their lives, but, oh boy, they were now making the most of such
opportunities. You can probably guess from the tone of these paragraphs that I
thought they were all creeps. Overhearing their dialogue, I often heard opinions
that were close to unbelievable. Allow me to report a summary overheard at
many gatherings of ladies.
First Lady: “Ava, do you mean to tell me you are paying your servants
seventy-five cents a day! That is absurd. It is far too much. I mean, you are
spoiling it for the rest of us.”
Second Lady: “I agree with Cynthia. I mean many of my friends rarely pay
them in cash at all. They are grateful for scraps they get in the household and
perhaps for an egg to take home at night.”
And my really favorite quote:
Third Lady: “Ava darling, you are a famous film star. If you gave them an
autographed copy of one of your photos at the end of the week they wouldn’t
need a salary. They would be very happy with that.”
I was also aware that my own salary was the subject of continued
speculation.
A brood of ladies: “I mean, Ava darling, why do you have to have a black
maid at all? There are so many country girls needing jobs around here. They
know the language. They know how to go to the market. They cook and clean
and scrub. They are very hard workers, and you could get half a dozen for the
wages you pay Rene.”
They were dead right. I knew that Miss G, as a loyal American, with
another loyal American working for her would not be swayed by this serpent
talk. It did confuse, intimidate, and influence her. That’s how the Film Star was
born.
Our personal explosion was not long in coming. After a long night boozing
with Miss G, I drank more than I should have simply to block out the noise. I
woke knowing that it was not my best day.
In the kitchen I faced an assembly line of new cartons that had arrived
from the States. They contained all manner of silver pieces, including piles of
knives, forks, spoons, and other kitchen implements. I unpacked them, washed
them and arranged them in drawers. I was just breathing a sigh of relief when
Miss G with her most imperial film star flourish appeared through the doorway.
She was exasperated, and her voice was shrill.
“Rene, didn’t you hear me calling you? I’ve been calling you for five
minutes, and you haven’t answered.”
I was contrite. “Miss G, I’m sorry. I just didn’t hear you call.”
“Well, you should have been more attentive. That’s what I pay you for.
That’s the whole reason you are here. You servants are all alike–inattentive, not
caring, lazy!”
I knew she was quoting the lies of her friends, but this was hurting.
“Miss G, I was just trying to pack all this silver away,” I said lamely. She
marched around the kitchen, her voice taking on an edge of hysteria. There was
no stopping her. She had to have servants, real servants. Servants who knew
what they were doing, servants who were happy to serve, trained servants. Spain
was full of them, so why hadn’t she got any. It was a constant flow. I had never
seen Miss G like this before.
I began to boil. Here I was a grown-up, tax-paying, flag-saluting American
citizen being screamed at in a foreign country by the girl I adored more than any
other person in my whole life. She was a girl I would have died for, my close
friend, my surrogate sister, my beloved female conspirator, my friend in need,
this girl who was a part of my heart, and she was giving me this going over as if
I was a piece of stale garbage.
I boiled over. I looked for something to throw at her. There were the
weapons–the cutlery, missiles of all varieties. I grabbed a handful of spoons and
threw those first. When they had all gone, I started on the forks. Then I didn’t
care what I threw: knives, serving spoons, ladles, dishes–crash, bang, wallop–
the lot. Miss G was dodging and diving like one of those girls in a knifethrowing act. When I’d used up all the cutlery, I looked for something else to
throw because I hadn’t made any significant hit on target yet. I pulled out the
drawer and threw that at her and then I pulled out another drawer and added that
to the missile count. I have an idea that I was also shouting things like, “I ain’t
taking no more of this film star shit from you or anybody else,” and other rude
things.
Miss G fled. I knew where she had gone, off to her bedroom. I marched
across to the drawer lying on the floor and gave that a hefty kick. It didn’t hurt
the drawer but it almost broke my toe. I hobbled out to the telephone and rang a
familiar number. “Taxi? Right. Will you send a car at once, no, immediately,
fast to La Bruja in Moraleja? Hurry!”
I limped back to my bedroom and picked up my suitcase. My suitcase was
always packed alongside Miss G’s emergency bag because you never could
know when she wanted to take off in any direction or at any time of the day or
night. Now, it was my turn.
I heard the taxi arrive, then marched out and shouted, “Hilton Hotel.” The
poor driver looked at me as if I’d gone mad, and I probably had. When I got
there the desk clerk recognized me and smiled and gave me a nice room. That
helped.
I took a bath and changed into a new dress. That afternoon, in a simmered
down condition, I walked around to the Plaza Major–the great stone-enclosed
square that has figured large in Madrid history. I sat at a small café out in the
sunshine drinking endless cups of café negro, spiked with an occasional shot of
harsh Spanish cognac, and watched the holiday makers and the beggars, the old
ladies in black with shopping bags and noses pressed against shop windows,
business men in their smart suits, ladies with their poodles, guard civilians in
their cloaks and three-cornered hats, lottery ticket sellers, horse-drawn carriages
with ancient drivers muffled against the weather, fluttering waiters. Lady
Mearene Jordan, late of St. Louis, Missouri, Lady of Color, was on vacation.

Next morning I heard a gentle tapping at my bedroom door. Opening up,
there was Miss G. I didn’t expect to see a hostile Miss G or a humble Miss G. It
could have been the film star Miss G, but this was the Miss G I really knew–
green eyes wide, mouth already smiling, voice urgent. “Rene, when are you
coming back?”

I let her in, and I said, “Miss G, I don’t know. I just need time to think.”
“Okay, honey, let’s go and get some coffee. I’m going to keep at you.”
She did keep at me. Every morning for the next six mornings, she arrived

at my Hilton Hotel bedroom door with the same sweet smile and the same
demand. I gave her the same answer. We never discussed the fight. As every
reader of this book has already heard a dozen times, we never discussed past
dramas.

On Sunday she picked me up at the hotel and took me to the Madrid
airport. I’d already told her that I wanted to go back to the USA, take a break
and decide what I should do.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll still be after you. I’ll get you through your Mama,
uh?”
We sat in the lounge waiting for my departure time. We had a few drinks.
As usual we gurgled with laughter over the look of somebody’s Sunday hat or
someone steaming through to catch his flight. She chattered away with bits of
news.
“I had those buggers from MGM on the phone for an hour this morning.
They are still sore about me ducking
Love Me or Leave Me
. They want me to do
this crappy thing called
The Little Hut
that is crap comedy. Only one thing good
about it is that the three male leads are David Niven, Jimmy Granger, and
Walter Chiari. They should be able raise a laugh with that lot even without a
script.”
Soon I was thirty thousand feet up over the Atlantic wondering why I
hadn’t tried to say all the things I should have said: “Miss G, you’ve opened
whole new worlds to me. I have been places, seen foreign parts, and known
great people. Yes, okay, as your maid, but also as your friend. I’ve been given
opportunities open to very few, especially to a black girl from St. Louis. I know
all that. I admit that. It’s all been an exhilarating charge across the first third of
my adult life. Now Miss, I want to stop and think. Sure, I love Spain, but I don’t
want to make it my permanent home. I know it is going to be yours. I miss the
sounds of America. I miss my family and friends, a good cheeseburger, a thick
steak, fried chicken, fried catfish, American autos, and the open and cheerful
society. I get homesick for these things.”
I think Miss G understood that and let me go. In Spain I had no identity.
Miss G loved it because she could blend into the background or blend out of it.
She could enjoy publicity if she wanted to but also could escape from the
frenzied intrusion of the media. I knew she was exulting in the fact that in the
time left under her MGM contract the most they could make her do was three
more movies and then she would be her own boss. I had a feeling that I wanted
to be my own boss too.
I went from Madrid to Chicago to talk to Tressie. Tressie looked at me
with her shrewd, older sister look and said, “You’ve left Miss G?” A big frown
appeared on her face. “That girl needs you just as much now as she always has.”
I said, “Tressie, I’ve got to make a life of my own. I’ve got to stand on my
own two feet.”
“Uh.” Said Tressie.
I went back to St. Louis and stayed with my folks. My Ma looked me
straight in the eye and said, “That girl’s been calling me again and again. She
wants to know when you are going back.”
“Ma, Miss G is fine. She is surrounded by friends and servants.”
My Ma didn’t hear me. “She wants to know when you are going back.”
I wondered that myself over the next couple of months as I took a
beautician’s course and a couple of jobs in stores before moving back to Los
Angeles.
Then one other factor entered my life. I fell in love. I had met a tall,
handsome guy–a sheriff with a big Stetson hat, a pistol in his holster, and a big
broad smile. He was the same shade of brown as I was and apparently was as
smitten as I was. So, between the odd jobs and more beautician courses, I started
an affair. For the time being I kept my secret, and it certainly stopped me
hurrying back to Miss G’s side. There was, of course, the usual drawback. He
was married—unhappily married, but then a lot of married men usually are
unhappy.
I let Miss G into my secret when she came to Hollywood to talk to her
agent and MGM. Bappie was now alone, as Charlie Guest had died. She had
bought a little house high in the hills behind Hollywood. Miss G stayed there,
and we talked in the alpine atmosphere.
“Married?” she said doubtfully. “Christ, all the nice guys are.”
Then she looked at me. “You know I’ve got to go to Rome to make
The
Little Hut
. Bappie wants to go with me now that she’s lost Charlie. Why don’t
you look after this house while we are away? Rags loves you to death. You
could act as our Hollywood contact while we are away. See how things work out
with the police department.”
I agreed. Things didn’t work out with the police department. I was back on
Miss G’s payroll.
The Little Hut
was a film adaptation of a long-running London and
Broadway play. It had been written by a Frenchman, Andre Roussin, as a farce.
A randy male gets cast ashore on a desert island and finds a gorgeous grassskirted female waiting for him with goo-goo eyes. In his version, three men had
been cast ashore with one lovely showgirl swimming ashore with them. As soon
as the MGM brass realized what they had bought, the screams went up.
Miss G said, “They thought it was immoral! It was outrageous! Three fully
grown men and one girl washed up on a desert island with nothing to do but you
know what; and they do ‘it’ in turns. It was a different guy every night, and it
was scandalous!”
“Now, if they had left it to me,” continued Miss G, “in the film we were
about to make, I would have arranged a suitable time schedule for all three poor
castaways.”
“Miss G?” I said. “A suitable time schedule?”
Miss G did one of her music hall faces. “You know, Rene, one every other
night. Maybe poker games for special Saturday and Sunday nights.” Her mirth
was outrageous. “You have to realize that Niven, Granger, and Chiari are really
nice, sexy guys.”
Unfortunately, MGM’s editorial alterations obliterated what might have
been Miss G’s idea of a nice friendly relationship on a desert island which might
have added a new slant to the term “ménage-a-quatre.” As it was, Jimmy
Granger was cast as Miss G’s husband. David Niven, who was Jimmy’s friend,
had to lust after her with no hope. Then just to liven things up, Walter Chiari
arrived dressed up in a grass skirt and war-paint shouting, “Boula-Boula,” for no
apparent reason. He was the Italian chef who had been shipwrecked in the same
yacht.
The film was doomed to mediocrity from the start. Miss G looked divine in
black lingerie and a grass skirt. Niven and Granger looked absurd in shirt,
drawers and socks, and Walter Chiari never stood a chance in his getup.
Miss G’s only realistic comment at the end of filming was, “Rene, if I had
ducked out of this one and got another suspension, I would still be forced to
make films for MGM into the next century.”
The film did mean one other thing to her, and that was that Walter Chiari
was now seriously into her life. Miss G’s relationship with Walter Chiari had
started in Rome with an introduction on the set of
The Barefoot Contessa
.
Walter was introduced as “one of Italy’s leading film and music hall artists.” His
English was diabolical, but as he smiled and bent over to kiss Miss G’s hand, his
determination to make up for his lack of English must have been uppermost in
his mind. I must also add that, in my opinion, Walter realized a strong
relationship with Miss G would be a career building move. I believe Miss G
thought that even before I did.
Walter was a different sort of man than Luis Miguel, whom Papa
Hemingway described so well in his book,
The Dangerous Summer
. “Luis
Miguel was a charmer–dark, tall, no hips…with a grave mocking face that went
from professional disdain to easy laughter.” Luis Miguel was Spanish; Walter
Chiari was Italian. Both were Latin, but with dramatic differences.
Walter was not your usual Italian type. He was fair-skinned, good-looking,
athletic and a gymnast of near acrobatic ability, as I was to discover in the
future.
MGM didn’t waste any time with Miss G, and they quickly had her back at
work in an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises
. Miss G said
immediately, “I know they will spoil the film. There is no way of making a film
that can do justice to Papa’s books.”
I said, “Miss G you aren’t psychic, and they haven’t got a script yet or
even a director.”
“Yes, they have–Henry King. You remember he did
The Snows of
Kilimanjaro
.”
“That was a good film.” I said. “You got good reviews. Papa didn’t
grumble too much about it. You liked Henry King, and he liked you.”
I was being a bit dramatic, but I remembered from the reviews and the
comments Henry King had made. He had said, “No one else could have given
the part the sensitivity, the bruised quality that Ava imparted to it….She had cut
out drinking, the late nights and too much Frankie. She had disciplined herself
rigorously for the part. She could always do this if she believed in a role, and she
believed her part as Cynthia. Sometimes she would come in grumbling in the
morning–she hated to get up early and drive to the studio. Once she was actually
on the floor, she worked with a kind of desperate involvement and intensity that
amazed me.”
Miss G said defensively, “I still love Henry King. He is a lovely guy.
Christ, he has been directing since they invented films. Papa’s books and short
stories never really do anything as films. His characters are his characters. You
can’t match faces to them.”
“But you loved playing Cynthia in Kilimanjaro. You matched the fire; you
liked the part.”
“Rene,” she voiced expressively, “it was a part. I could understand her. She
was American, and I could understand her. But it was just a part. Now, how the
hell am I going to play this young English tramp, Lady Brett Ashley? I love her,
and it is one of Papa’s greatest books. But I can’t be her.”
“Miss G,” I said, “if you love her, you will play her well. Besides, you
have got Tyrone Power as your leading man for the first time.”
“Jesus, as Jake how the hell is Ty Power going to play a man with his
testicles shot off in the Big War? What am I going to say, ‘bad luck?’ All the
heroes I get in films are testicle-free.”
“Miss G,” I protested. “It is not true.”
“It is true. What happened in
The Barefoot Contessa
? Poor Rossano
Brazzi, playing the count who married me, had lost his private parts, and then he
shoots me because I want to give him an heir and hire the chauffeur to make me
pregnant. A girl has not a chance.”
Then she thought about it and added, “The only good thing about
The Sun
Also Rises
is that it is going to be made in Spain, on my front door, so to speak. I
love Errol Flynn.”
It did start in Spain, in Pamplona, a pretty little city that Miss G and I had
visited a couple of times in our traveling days. It started in winter which was a
bit of a mistake. Somebody had forgotten that Pamplona stands half way up the
Pyrenees. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit there, but Pamplona is certainly in
the foothills of the high ranges of those mountains. The snow can be three feet
deep. The rain can pour for days on end. It isn’t sunny in Spain.
They had no alternative but to transfer the location to sunnier climes. They
moved it to Morelia in Mexico, and Miss G loved every minute. They rented a
fifteen-room house for her with servants, lots of rooms, and a swimming pool.
She enjoyed eating and drinking with Tyrone Power, Mel Ferrer and his wife,
and Errol Flynn, who was now slightly past his swashbuckling pirate days and
more content with a large vodka.
I always liked what Bob Evans, who played the part of Ava’s love-stunned
bullfighter, said about her afterwards. He said, “I had a real collision with Ava at
the outset of the picture. She was determined that Walter Chiari would play the
bullfighter.” Later Bob became Paramount’s Production Chief, so I guess he
knew what he was talking about.
By this time, Walter was firmly entrenched in Miss G’s life, and she was
giving him a helping hand. As she was only on loan to Zanuck and Twentieth
Century Fox, she had no hope. Bob went on, “Zanuck and Henry King wanted
me, so she was rude and unpleasant to me, which made our love scenes quite an
ordeal. Later on she relented and became reasonably friendly. She drank too
much, and her language was offensive. I thought her sister had a bad influence
on her.”
That’s about right. Bappie could be a bad influence on anybody. When she
wanted to be nasty, she could be really nasty. She was nasty about blacks, Jews
and Dagos. But she had lots of good points, many of them difficult to dig out;
however, we got on. Bob Evans made one good point: “Ava was wonderful
after we got over that first hurdle. When she is in a scene she shoots off electric
sparks. The love scenes were so violent that when they ended my teeth were
chattering , and she took a half hour rest.”
Miss G roared with laughter at that. She thought the rest was pretty
accurate.
On one of my visits to Bappie’s house on Rinconia Drive after we were all
back in California, I met Myra, Miss G’s older sister. She was visiting. While
there Miss G took me aside to tell me one interesting item of news.
“Guess who rang last night?”
I didn’t try. “Who?”
“Howard Hughes. I thought he had given up after all this time. ‘So Ava,’
he said, ‘can I come around and talk to you and take you out to dinner?’”
“‘Strange,’ I said. ‘Howard, you know I’m staying here with Bappie,’ I
said, ‘and Myra is here as well. I’m going out to dinner with them tonight.’”
“‘That’s fine. Let me take all of you out to dinner. What about the
Beachcomer? How is that?’”
“Great!” Ava said. “Bappie will love to see you.”
Miss G told me how he’d come around later to pick them up, and before
heading out Mr. Hughes had said to her, “Can I have a private word with you
before we leave?”
“Sure,” Ava said, knowing that at least Bappie would be pleased. “Christ,
she never gave up telling me how crazy I was not to marry the richest man in the
world.”
I was curious. “So what was the private word?”
“He hummed and hesitated and looked at his fingers. Then he plucked up
courage and said, ‘I’ve decided to marry Jean Peters.’”
“God Almighty, Rene, I think he expected me to burst into tears or cry,
‘Howard, you can’t do that!’”
“So what did you do?”
Miss G shrugged. “I’d never met Jean Peters and only knew of her because
of her films. I said to him, ‘That’s great, Howard. Congratulations. I’m sure you
will be very happy.’”
“And what did he do?”
“Not much. He sighed, stood up, and said, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’”
“And that was it?”
“More or less. The four of us trooped outside. Howard’s usual beat-up
Chevrolet car was waiting for us. He put my two sisters in the back, closed me
into the front passenger seat, and walked around the back of the car to get in
behind the wheel. We three girls had been talking non-stop for hours. We went
on talking non-stop. Five minutes later Bappie said, ‘Where’s Howard?’”