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Hollywood Beauty
Linda Darnell and the American Dream
By Ronald L. Davis UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 1991 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-8696-2
CHAPTER 1
Before Dawn
It was pouring rain, just as it had for days in Atlanta. Linda Darnell, only a few years earlier Hollywood's "girl with the perfect face," sank into gloom. Linda wasn't a girl anymore, not that that particularly bothered her. She was forty-one, a little puffy, with a thick waist she had fought most of her life. Yet her arms and legs were pencil thin, so that she wore ankle-length dresses and long sleeves whenever possible. Sitting alone in her Atlanta hotel room in March 1965, she was painfully aware that she no longer resembled the young beauty who had adorned the Technicolor screen in Blood and Sand, Centennial Summer, and Forever Amber. Those pictures were from another life, made by an unsophisticated girl from Texas who hadn't learned how to survive in the Hollywood jungle, who hadn't yet become bitter. Since then she had grown angry, disillusioned, bewildered, disappointed, yet somehow managed to keep her sense of humor and most of her integrity. Individuals may have let her down, but she hadn't lost her childlike faith in people. Even after everything else was gone, no one could rob her of her ability to love, although the pain of loving unwisely burned without remedy.
Linda Darnell, once considered Hollywood's Glory Girl, pulled herself off the bed and poured half an inch of vodka into a tumbler. Within an hour it would be time to leave for the theater. Exhausted, she began fixing her face, mechanically bringing to life the beauty that had once lifted a shy school girl to international fame. Hers was the fantasy come true for a Depression generation that needed to believe in magic and fairy godmothers. Brushing her cheek with rouge, she tried to remember when her appearance hadn't been more important than anything else. Even when she was tired and wanted out, there was always someone to push her toward success, promising her a life of tinsel and riches if she would do their bidding. But the tinsel soon tarnished, and what was left was hard work and eventually heartbreak. Despite her despondency that afternoon in Atlanta, she found her mirror image smiling back, as she thought of the folly of her own success. She finished the vodka and began tying a scarf around her hair.
Long before necessary she was in her dressing room at the Atlanta Community Playhouse, ready for the evening's performance. As she stood waiting to make her entrance, a young actor appeared at her side. "You haven't forgotten the prop change tonight have you, Miss Darnell?" he asked, ruining her concentration. "Don't you dare upset an actor or actress before they step out on a goddamn stage," she snapped at him later. "And don't treat me as if I were an amateur. I may not be the greatest actress in the world, but by damn I'm a professional!"
For the rest of their run the young actor fawned over her, and she hated that still more. She had been told since she was fifteen how special she was, but she'd learned better, the hard way. Invariably the Hollywood leeches were the ones who flattered most, told her what she wanted to hear, even when she knew it wasn't so. But she'd never allowed herself to become hard. Probably she'd even encouraged the lies, wanting to believe what she knew she shouldn't, at least for the moment. When the whole world is picking you apart, and you're projected larger than life on the screen—your emotions, face, voice, everything—magnified until a single wrinkle looks like a canyon, life can get pretty frightening.
Linda remained depressed throughout her Atlanta run, nauseated and rundown, despite the vitamin shots and Miltown (an anti-anxiety drug). She liked acting on the stage, liked the feel of a live audience, and left Atlanta confident she had played her part well, never suspecting she had given her last performance. After two grueling months on the road she needed a rest, and decided to spend Easter relaxing with her dearest friends, Jeanne and Richard Curtis, at their new home in Glenview, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. She had met the Curtises eighteen years earlier, on the set of Unfaithfully Yours, and the couple had grown closer to her than her own family. Although the Darnells loved each other in their crazy way, somehow they had become alienated; Mama Pearl had seen to that, just as she had seen to everything else.
Linda often thought of Pearl, although she hadn't visited her mother in recent years. "They always said you'd never die, Mama, as long as I lived, because we're so much alike," Linda frequently remarked, and certainly the similarities had grown sharper. Pearl had become bedridden and lived in a convalescent home, her eyesight too poor to read, but the family still suffered from the impact of her influence, as though she were still active. Monte, Linda's younger sister, worked as a nurse nearby and looked in on her mother, while Cal, her brother, had moved to England, escaping as best he could the hurts of the past. Only Undeen, the eldest, had sustained a marriage, had children, and found contentment in the simple pleasures of homemaking. In many ways Linda envied her sister, who, even when they were children, had been referred to as the white sheep of the family. She was the one the rest depended on. Undeen had largely raised her younger sisters and brother, and they all adored her for her sincerity. Linda dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief on the plane bound for Chicago, as she thought how different life might have been for them all had Pearl not forced the Hollywood dream on them. "I never wanted this," Linda often said after achieving stardom. But she knew she wouldn't have had it any other way.
Within a few days after joining the Curtises, Linda felt better than she had in months. Emotionally she came alive again, spending hours with Jeanne cooking and shopping, shocking Richard with her ribald humor, then covering her face with her hands like a naughty child. "Linda," Dick told her, "in all my years in the Marine Corps I never met a sergeant who could outswear you. You're the only woman I know who can be dressed like a queen and blow someone right out of the air with her language." She gave a raucous laugh and said in her husky voice, "Well, I've got more balls than most men do! If there's anything I hate, it's a weak man."
But Linda wasn't as tough as she liked to appear. When she and Jeanne discovered a family of raccoons in the backyard, Linda insisted on putting food out for them, sitting for hours in the dark waiting for them to appear. She had always loved animals; all four of the Darnell children delighted in taking care of helpless creatures, perhaps to give themselves some semblance of power, when they themselves were victims of the domineering Pearl. "Do you know what I would really like to have done?" Linda asked Jeanne one day. "I would like to have been a doctor. Medicine fascinates me." Suddenly she turned remorseful, haunted again by what life might have been, had the Hollywood dream remained merely a fantasy.
The Curtises' next-door neighbor saw Linda emptying garbage one morning, but didn't recognize her without makeup. Later, when Dick had to fly to Los Angeles on business, the actress drove with Jeanne to the airport. "Dick's one of a kind," Linda said on their way back. "He's the only real man left." Patricia, Jeanne and Dick's sixteen-year-old daughter, was in Glenview, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Linda's adopted daughter Lola, who was scheduled to join her mother the following week. Lola and Patty were the same age and had grown up almost like sisters. Although their personalities were very different, Lola felt far closer to Patty than she did to any of her cousins.
On Thursday, April 8, Jeanne, Patty, and Linda spent a quiet evening at the Curtises' town house. The women worked into the night sorting through the receipts necessary for filing Linda's income tax return, and after bundling everything up for her accountant, Linda happened to notice that Star Dust, one of her early movies, was showing on television. Smiling, she snapped on the set in the living room shortly after midnight and said to Jeanne and Patty, "Let's stay up and watch this. We need some laughs."
The credits had no sooner come on than Linda was transported back to her first months in Hollywood. Lola's father, J. Peverell Marley, had been the cinematographer on Star Dust. "I used to wait for him after we'd finished shooting and spill my guts to him," Linda commented to Patty and Jeanne. "I sure never thought I'd end up marrying the guy." She smiled at Jeanne. "Pev may not have been the most polished man in the world, but he was dependable and honest. And he understood Hollywood. He taught me a lot." She lit a cigarette and began watching her scenes. "Linda giggled all the way through the picture," Jeanne remembered later. Since the film parodied some of Linda's own adventures breaking into movies, she became nostalgic. "We ought to order a print of this to show Lola when she comes," she suggested. "I'll call Darryl Zanuck tomorrow. The son of a bitch owes me something for those thirteen years!"
Linda laughed when the movie was over. Jeanne switched off the television set around 2:30 in the morning, carrying the two ashtrays they had filled to the kitchen sink. "I sure hope that coffee doesn't keep us awake," Linda commented. She found a book on wild animals to read before going to sleep, and they went upstairs and got into their pajamas. Linda kept coming over to Jeanne's bed in the room where they both were sleeping, to show her pictures of snakes she found fascinating, but Jeanne thought they were repulsive. Finally around 3:30 they fell asleep. The next thing Jeanne remembered was hearing Patty come in and say, "Mother, wake up. I have cold cream on my face, and it's running into my eyes. There's something wrong. There seems to be a lot of heat."
Jeanne bolted out of bed and threw on a light. The three of them went into the hall and walked to the top of the stairs, looking down into the living room. "We could see a glow, not flames, but a glow, like from an electric heater," Jeanne said later. Calmly they decided to investigate. They went into the bathroom, and each grabbed a wet towel." We came back to the head of the steps and there was a whoosh sound," Jeanne recalled. "It seemed like a jet engine. Then flames shot up the stairs to within one step of where we were standing. Apparently the heat was there in the living room, and then it exploded. Whether opening the bedroom doors had created a draft, I don't know. But instantly the heat became very intense, and the flames came up the stairs and then receded. It was like a whirlwind of flames." By now the smoke had started, curling out from the woodwork and creeping over the floor. The two women ran to call the fire department, each picking up a different phone and keeping the other from getting through. "You hang up, Linda," Jeanne shouted, "and I'll dial." They were a little more excited, but basically still calm. Jeanne reached the Glenview Fire Department, then rejoined Linda.
By this time smoke was engulfing the whole upstairs, and they decided to wait by a window. Jeanne looked around, but couldn't find Patty. Linda said, "I think she's at the foot of your bed." They found the girl—frightened, crouched by her mother's bed. Jeanne grabbed her daughter and dragged her to the window. The smoke and heat were growing more intense by the second. Suddenly even the carpet felt so hot they could barely stand on it. The aluminum blinds on the window were hot, and Jeanne couldn't touch the crank to open the glass. "Nobody has any idea of the heat," she explained later. "It's excruciating, and you're literally blowing to expel the heat from your body. It's like sitting in the hottest oven imaginable, only there was smoke mixed in with this."
Finally Jeanne grabbed the blinds and broke the window, because they had to have air. She managed to get the window open, but the smoke was stifling. "Get Pat out," Linda said, still with no hint of panic. Jeanne got Patty up on a chair and out the window, ordering her to jump. It was a two-and-a-half story drop, but Patty jumped onto the concrete patio, breaking her leg, heel, and ankle, and fracturing a vertebra. Jeanne assumed Linda was right behind her. She worked herself out onto the ledge and turned to help her friend. When Linda failed to take her hand, Jeanne realized she wasn't there. Jeanne went back in, but the heat and smoke drove her out again. By now firefighters were arriving. Jeanne was back on the ledge, hanging onto the roof. She kept calling to Linda, but there was no answer. "There's a lady inside," Jeanne yelled to the firefighters. "Get her out." They thought she said "baby" and tried to break through the large plate glass window in the living room. Meanwhile, people were running all over the lawn.
It was a rainy morning, and now about 5:10, David Mundhenk, a young neighbor, had made his way to the sliding glass door in back after spotting a figure in the living room silhouetted against the flames and smoke. He smashed the window with a shovel and tried to enter, cutting his wrist badly, only to be driven back by the smoke. The figure inside suddenly disappeared into the roaring inferno, and David heard a muffled cry through the crackle of flames that enveloped the living room. Jeanne was still screaming, "There's a lady in there!" Firefighters found Patty and soon got her mother off the ledge with a ladder. Somebody handed Jeanne a coat and a pair of galoshes, and she hurried around to the front yard. Meanwhile firefighters were inside, crawling around wearing oxygen masks, looking for a baby.
On the stairs they found a bedspread, a blanket, and a sheet Linda had pulled off the bed to wrap herself in. Apparently terrified of jumping, she had descended the stairs into a blinding wall of smoke, feeling her way along the banister, and attempted to go out the front door. "Linda had very weak wrists and ankles," Jeanne explained, "and I'm sure she was afraid to get out on the ledge and jump." She may have made it to the door, but couldn't turn the deadbolt, which would have been hot. Confused and disoriented by the heat and smoke, she evidently panicked and fell.
Firefighters found her on the living room floor, conscious but with second- and third-degree burns over ninety percent of her body, including her face. Jeanne arrived at the front door just as they were carrying Linda out. They took her to an ambulance, only to discover the vehicle's back door was jammed. Workers tried to pry it open, but couldn't. They put Linda in a police car and drove her to Skokie Valley Community Hospital. Almost immediately another ambulance arrived, and Patty and David Mundhenk, whose wrist was gushing blood, were put inside. Since Jeanne was still on her feet, a friend drove her to the hospital, arriving shortly before Patty was taken into surgery. Already reporters were swarming the corridors, hungry for a story about a Hollywood celebrity. One put his foot in front of the cart wheeling Patty Curtis into the operating room, trying to stop it long enough to ask questions, but a police officer ran over and drew his pistol. Doctors soon had Jeanne's burns and cuts bandaged, while they kept Linda in an emergency room, working over her frantically, calling in additional staff. A tube had been inserted into her throat to ease her breathing, and she was given fluid and plasma intravenously for shock. "Mother," Patty said just before she was taken into surgery, "Linda is alive. I know, because she was in the booth next to me in emergency and she was swearing. You should have heard the language. I didn't see her, but I know she's alive."
CHAPTER 2
Pearl and Monetta
Although she couldn't swim a stroke, Maggie Pearl grew up A playing along the Tennessee River, on the outskirts of the village of Clifton, Tennessee, where in 1891 she had been born. Fir trees blanketed the hills east of the valley, while watermills and tanneries stood on the banks of the merging streams. Forty years later Maggie Pearl would be Mrs. Roy Darnell, the harridan behind the adolescent girl Hollywood made a star at fifteen. But at the turn of the century Maggie Pearl was just the beautiful, strong-willed daughter of Mary York and Thomas Gaugh Brown.
When she was ten, Maggie Pearl found an abandoned skiff and crawled inside. Soon she was lost in fantasies of resplendent actresses and all the nice things she had seen in mail order catalogues at her father's store. From afar she gradually heard voices. She sat up to find the skiff had been swept out into the river. Along the bank townspeople were yelling, pointing as the tiny craft made its way into turbulent water. A neighbor ran down the boardwalk to Tom Brown's store, finding Tom in the adjoining saloon. Immediately Tom and some friends dashed toward the river, located a boat, and began rowing toward the runaway skiff. Mary Brown waited on the sidelines, wringing her hands and murmuring prayers, as baby Cleo screamed and cried into her mother's skirts. Tom and the men finally reached Maggie Pearl, but not until she had added plenty of excitement to the town's sleepy afternoon. "She was always a colorful person," Pearl's sister Cleo said later. "She was always looking for something more than just the ordinary."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hollywood Beauty by Ronald L. Davis. Copyright © 1991 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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