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  For the next week or so, she paraded me around various places. She told agents and producers, and whoever would talk to her, that I was going to be the next Vivian Leigh, though I looked nothing like Vivian Leigh. They’d smile, chuck me under the chin and let me do a reading or audition of some sort. I failed miserably. I was no actress. However, my sister was. What she lacked in looks, she more than made up for in talent.

  The way it happened was this: One day after I had been rejected after an audition, I’d been reduced to a miserable mass of nervous tears. I knew I was failing my mother and this killed me. We were sitting in a waiting room and I just couldn’t do another one. My mother was livid.

  The agent came out, saw what was going on and said, “What about the other one?”

  My mother turned to the agent and said, as if Andrea were invisible, “Who? Her?”

  “Yeah, her. Can she do anything?”

  My mother stared at my sister as if wondering the same thing. “Well, I don’t know.”

  He told her he’d let her have a go and they disappeared into his office. My mother hissed at me, “You can do this! Why are you acting like a baby?”

  I didn’t know. I just didn’t like it. Nevertheless, Andrea and the agent stayed in there for about fifteen minutes, then both came out smiling.

  “Mrs. Peterson, if I might have a word.”

  My mother followed him into his office and came out ten minutes later with a smile as wide as the Mississippi River. Andrea had gotten the part! She was to start work the next morning. Not only that, the agent wanted to sign her.

  So, my mother’s ambitions were then turned away from me to Andrea. She seemed to live vicariously through Andrea, who really took to acting and the whole Hollywood world like a fish to water. She’s still quite famous and receives fan mail all the time. But, of course, you probably already know this.

  It wasn’t long before Andrea began to get more and more work and Mother decided we should stay in Hollywood a bit longer. She phoned old Randolph, who wanted us back home, but her mind was set. We weren’t leaving.

  So, instead of making me go to any more auditions, Mother enrolled me in school out in Hollywood, which was much larger than the two-room schoolhouse I was used to back in Kentucky. It frightened me to death! But I did it mainly because I only had a year or so left. Andrea had a tutor. She never officially got her high school diploma, either. But, really, what use would it have been to her? She knew how to read and as long as she could do that, what did all the other matter?

  They were busy and left me alone most of the time. I had a few friends in school and a few from the neighborhood. But mostly, I was alone. But I didn’t care. By that time, I had discovered something. It was writing.

  I began to write poems at first, like we all do. Then stage plays, which I didn’t particularly like doing, then short stories. Those were the best. My mother found a few of them and entered them into some contest, which I lost, which made me livid. I was angry that she had submitted them and was even more angry when they didn’t win.

  She asked me, “What’s the use in doing it if you’re not gonna show it off?”

  I couldn’t think of a reason, really, but I was painfully shy back then and would grow embarrassed at the least little thing.

  Oh, dear Marabel, I am tiring again. Let me resume this another day.

  With warmest regards and kindest wishes,

  Ms. C.V. Weeks

  P.S. I told you not to send anymore cookies! Naughty girl! I’ll have you know I gave most of them to Sally, my personal nurse, who comes every other day. She said they were delicious.

  * * * * *

  July 1st

  Dearest Marabel,

  Thank you for the lovely postcard from your vacation. You didn’t have to do that! It was nice to receive, though. I’ve never been to the Bahamas, but I’ve heard it is very nice there. I hope you had a wonderful time.

  We’ll get right back into the story. I think we were at the part where my sister, Andrea, got me a job at the studio she was working for. She was under contract then and had some pull. I’m not sure if they still do that sort of thing these days.

  Well, I’d just finished high school and had become a sort of beach bum. I had a few girlfriends and we’d start out our days about eleven or so in the morning, meet up for a bite to eat, then head over to the beach, where we would sunbathe all day and gossip. The occasional boy would join us or stop by to say hello. You know how boys are.

  I was having a very good time. I even had a steady date then, his name was Marco and he was the first boy I’d ever had sex with. (And, yes, people did things like that back then. All the time!) However, I didn’t love Marco as much as I loved riding around in his convertible. In fact, I didn’t really like Marco that much at all. His father was some big entertainment lawyer and had spoiled him rotten. Which was one of the reasons he was absolutely unbearable.

  My sister, Andrea, was now an established actress. She was always working. And, because she’d always been a little jealous of me—only God knows why, that girl had everything!—she told mother that I should get a job and get up off my “lazy ass”—her words. My mother, who was now a divorcée for the second time, agreed. Andrea set it all up. I was to start work in the costume department the following week.

  You see, she could do this because she was becoming a known actress and had leverage. Leverage she used to make me go to work! Oh, how I hated her then! How could she have done this to me? I was eighteen and all I wanted to do was lie on the beach and act like an eighteen-year-old. Andrea wanted to see me working. I wanted to see me having fun and being a teenager. She won out, mainly because my mother, who was always trying to keep peace between us, sided with Andrea and not me.

  I started work the following Monday. I hated it. The head seamstress hated me, too. One time, I accidentally ripped up an old costume from some Shakespearean movie and she actually slapped me. I cried all the way home. Andrea had her fired after that, but I refused to go back.

  Andrea, determined that I would work, then got me a job as a set decorator. I didn’t mind that as much, but I felt like I was always in the way. And some of the actresses were so unbearable. They’d hiss at you to get out of their pretty way. They’d complain to the director about you. I later realized it wasn’t so much my inability to decorate a set as it was my looks. They felt they were competing with me and that I’d take their jobs. They couldn’t get it through their heads that I had no desire to be an actress. Besides that, I was quite bad at it.

  So, I was eventually fired from that, as well. After that, Andrea got me a job in the prop department. I loved this job. I worked with a young man named Herbert McCloud—he’d later become a director—and we had so much fun! We’d take off in the studio car and go into the city to shop for props every day. We’d eat fattening foods—ice cream, cookies, all of it. Hot dogs, too, I loved hot dogs. There was this little place shaped like a hamburger then that had the most divine hot dogs. I ate so many one day I got sick and had to call in the next day.

  But, soon, Herbert moved up to be an assistant director and I worked most of the time by myself, which wasn’t that much fun. I didn’t shop for props as much and mostly kept to myself. I would read books in the back of the department and sometimes fall asleep. I was, of course, caught. You guessed it. I got fired.

  Andrea was incensed. She said she didn’t know what to do with me. I just wanted her to leave me the hell alone. She got me another job, the last one I ever had.

  Even though I was out of school, I was still writing here and there back then, but it didn’t become a real part of me until I stepped into the writing department as a clerk that I began to feel the passion for writing that I have now.

  These men in the writing department—oh you should have seen them! They were almost zealous! They all wanted that one perfect line, that one perfect plot that would enable them to move on and “really do something.” Most of them were
frustrated novelists but they all wanted awards and adulation as much as any actor. Their egos were always clashing and I don’t know how they even worked together. They sabotaged one another, told lies on each other and made life generally miserable. Writers can sometimes be the biggest enemies of other writers as well as themselves. But that is the way it goes.

  There was one big room with a big table in the middle of it and that’s where they spent the majority of their time, even though they each had their own desks. They ranged in age from fairly young, late twenties, or pretty old, late fifties. Most of them wore suits to work, but soon, their jackets and vests and ties would come off and they’d sweat as they pounded out ideas while cigarettes dangled from their mouths. The room was always filled with smoke and I believe that’s where I picked up my bad habit.

  Nevertheless, they were very passionate. They’d come up with an idea and it’d bounce around the room like they were playing catch. Everyone would have something to say about it. They’d hit the table with their fists, they’d yell and scream at each other—and whatever unlucky soul who dared interrupt them—and sometimes, when they hit upon a really good “one,” they’d get up on the table and dance.

  They always, always reeked of liquor.

  I was just a clerk and a little intimidated by them. Mostly I typed, made coffee and went for sandwiches. I just tried to stay out of their way. One day, I was asked to take diction, which I’d learned in school. They had a good idea and they didn’t want one word to escape the room. So, I sat there most of the day scribbling.

  The idea went a little something like this: There’s this man. He’s just committed a crime and, of course, he wants to get away with it. However, there is one witness—his wife, who has just told him she was going to turn him in.

  “But why would she do that?” one of them asked. “Why would she squeal on him?”

  This bothered them immensely. They didn’t know. They couldn’t come up with a reason. The reason, to me, was obvious, so obvious that I couldn’t believe they couldn’t see it. In my mind, the character was going to turn him in because she was mad at him for something. She was a woman, right? And most times, when women get mad at men, it’s because they’re mad at him. I understood this completely because I had witnessed my mother do this to my father a million times.

  I didn’t know it, but I’d said what I was thinking out loud. I’d mumbled it. And they had heard it. The room grew very quiet. I looked up from my steno pad to see all of them staring at me.

  “What did you just say?” one of them asked me.

  I stumbled over my words, “Uh…uh…”

  He hunkered down in front of me and said, “You said she was mad at him about something.”

  I looked around the room and wished I could crawl under a desk. Like I said, these were very intimidating men. They were smart and brash and… Well, they were bigger than me.

  Another one said, “Do you think he cheated on her?”

  I said, “Are you speaking to me?”

  He said, “Hell, yeah, I am. Did he cheat on her?”

  I considered. “No.”

  Another one said, “Then why?’

  I thought about it and replied, “She doesn’t love him anymore.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Has she found someone else?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s disillusioned, that’s all. Marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, you know?”

  They all got very quiet then. They stared at me, then turned to one another, “She’s got it!” and “That’s excellent!” and “Tell us more!”

  I thought about it and said, “To me, the story really isn’t about him. I mean, he commits this crime at first, okay, but the story is about her, and her desire to get away from him. And that’s why she’s going to turn him in. It’s like he’s a bad person, a criminal, but he still has to deal with personal issues. That’s what it’s about. It’s about him and her dealing with their issues.”

  One of them, I think his name was Malcolm, turned in his chair towards me. “What’s her motivation?”

  I smiled, “Well, what’s the crime? I mean, did he steal something? Did he kill someone?”

  One of them shouted, “He killed someone and got paid for it!”

  Another one, “But he hasn’t collected the loot yet!”

  “So,” I said. “Her motivation is to collect the loot and in the meanwhile, get rid of him.”

  “But why does she hate him so much?”

  I considered. “He promised her…something.”

  “A baby!”

  “A big house!”

  “A new car!”

  “No,” I said. “That’s way too easy. Let me think… Umm… Hold on… Wait! I know! He promised her a better life!”

  They stared at me and one of them said quietly, “And that’s the title: A Better Life.”

  He held out his hands, almost ceremoniously.

  All of them stood up and began to hoot and holler and jump around. They pulled me into their little celebration and I had the best time. I even drank a little of their liquor. After that, I was on the team and we wrote A Better Life in less than a week. The studio loved it. It went into immediate production and starred a newcomer, an unknown actor named Vic Martin.

  I am going to stop here, dear Marabel. I have an old copy of that movie and I’d love to sit through it again.

  With warmest regards and kindest wishes,

  Ms. C.V. Weeks

  P.S. Yes, you may make a copy of that novel I sent to keep for yourself. I don’t mind at all.

  * * * * *

  July 12th

  Dearest Marabel,

  So, where were we? I’d just gotten a job as a writer at the studio. I was very happy then, mostly because I was earning my own money and was able to move into a house with Herbert, my best friend. He was still assistant directing then but was gaining some notice.

  Also, I had dumped Marco and began dating Vic Martin, which made me happier. Would you like to hear about how we met? I’ll assume you do.

  Vic was very talented and very good looking. He was the first man I ever really loved. In him, I saw everything I was looking for. I even wrote a few sappy scripts about all of this romantic love. The guys would rib me about it, telling me I’d gone soft, but I didn’t care. When one is in love, she usually doesn’t care what others think of her behavior.

  A Better Life was a hit. Which meant, pardon the pun again, Vic and I both had a better life. Our jobs were secure for a while. We were in demand. Him more than me, as I was just a writer and not a famous actor.

  Vic and I met one day when I’d been called down to the set. This was odd for those days but a producer wanted to go over some notes he had. How I hated that! I hated it because the producers always wanted to meddle with the lines. They always thought they could write them better. It made all of us writers more than a little indignant. We’d curse them and say, “If they can do it better, then why don’t they write the damn things themselves?!” To which we would reply, “Because they can’t!” (Keep in mind that most writers’ egos are out of control.)

  Of course, when I got there, the producer was doing something else and I sat around and waited, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Vic was going over his lines. He came over and, not knowing who I was—one of the writers of the script—asked me to help him.

  I stared up at him and became very nervous. He was tall and handsome. You could tell that he was going to be a big movie star, too. Back then, you had to be extraordinarily good looking to be a movie star. I mean, really good looking. Vic was and that meant he was going to be huge. Everyone knew it and everyone talked about him around the lot.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked.

  “Uh, sure,” I mumbled. “I can help you.”

  “You do Betty and I’ll be Jack, of course,” he said and smiled at me.

  Betty was the lead character, the wife, and Jack was her husband.<
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  “Sure,” I said and tried to hide my nervousness. But I was used to this sort of thing as Andrea always made me help her memorize her lines.

  “I’ll start,” he said and began, “Betty, what’d you mean? You can’t just walk out on me like this!”

  “But Jack,” I said, trying to remain dignified but feeling foolish. “I can and I will walk out on you.”

  “Betty, I’m begging you here. Soon, we’ll have the loot, we’ll have the big house, I swear. You know, I love you Betty. You can’t deny that.”

  I scanned the script which called for Betty to pick up her purse. I mimicked this, feeling absolutely foolish. Then Jack grabs her arm and she hauls back and slaps him. I mimicked it as best I could, but I caught his eye with the script.

  “Damn,” Vic said, rubbing his eye. “Why’d you do that?”

  I was mortified. I don’t know why I did it. I was just so nervous and I’d been trying to be believable. Now, I’d almost blacked the lead actor’s eye. I was beyond horrified at all this.

  Just then, the producer walked in and saw us. He strolled over and said, “What are you doing, Vic?”

  “She’s helping me with my lines.”

  “No, she ain’t,” he growled. “She’s one of the lead writers on this thing and I won’t have you putting one over on her to get yourself more screen time!”

  Keep in mind that back then, people at the studio didn’t necessarily cater to the actors the way they do now. They always let them know that they could be fired or written out of a script at the drop of a hat.

  So, upon hearing this, Vic nearly died. He looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him up. Poor thing. The producer took me by the arm and steered me away.

  A few days later, I received a bouquet of flowers with a card, “Dear C.V., You really should have made yourself known. I almost lost my job over that! You have to make up for it by allowing me to take you to dinner.”