Louise married Hal Wallis in 1927 and began a new career as an angel of mercy who covered her philanthropies in secrecy. A law student concluded that he’d have to quit school because his girl-wife was pregnant; Louise took up all the bills. She would go out to UCLA Medical Center to feed young children, rock and sing them to sleep. Not all of her charges recovered; she made a special point of seeking out the hopeless, terminal cases because her heart was big and strong enough to pour out its love even when a child was doomed.
And she never lost her sense of fun. There used to be a vacant corner lot next to her small house. At night she’d wander over the ground scattering wild-flower seeds, just for the sake of hearing her neighbors exclaim in wonder that only a blooming miracle could have produced the flowers that sprang up. It was Louise’s sense of humor, matched with the need to teach Hal and his friends a lesson, that brought the stately brothel keeper to the Wallis’ home in the San Fernando Valley.
Hal was in the habit of asking his men friends and associates around for Sunday luncheon to sample his wife’s delicious cooking. Most of his buddies seemed to think this was something too tasty to waste on their wives, so they brought along their girl friends. Finally, Louise’s patience ran out. One Sunday, when the usual crowd had gathered for some home cooking, Louise entered with her own special guest. Almost all the men knew her instantly; some of their companions needed no introductions either. Not a single harsh word was spoken between Mr. and Mrs. Wallis; but from that Sunday on, the husbands started bringing their wives.
Faced with the certainty of a prison term, the madam asked for Louise’s help. “I’ve no place to hide my jewels, my car, and my clothes,” she said, “and they’re all the savings I’ve got left. If the police get their hands on them, I may never get them back. Is there anything you can do?”
“Certainly,” Louise said. “There’s a special stall in my garage to which this is the only key. Drive in there tomorrow, lock the door, and keep the key until you’re free.” That is why, when search was made of the lady’s place of business, there were some mighty mystified investigators around, for they could find nothing. All her valuables were safe in the Wallises’ garage, and when Hal reads this it will be news to him.
Crooks as well as shady ladies like to mingle with celebrities. Bugsie Siegel’s gaudy days and nights as a man-about-Hollywood ended on a davenport in the house at 810 Linden Drive, Beverly Hills, that his dear friend, red-haired Virginia Hill, rented at $500 a month. “Death at the hands of a person or persons unknown,” said the coroner’s jury after the machine-gun bullet holes in his back had been counted, fired (while the watchdogs remained peculiarly silent) through a window.
Bugsie loved to socialize. He’d turn up, dressed to the nines, to take a drink or play poker as the guest of all kinds of people. Every two weeks he came into Beverly Hills to get his hair cut by his favorite barber. Marie MacDonald used to dine in his company at Las Vegas. George Raft appeared as a witness for Bugsie when the mobster went on trial in Los Angeles. Leo Durocher was one of many who knew Bugsie well. The day before he was rubbed out he sent a check for $2500 to the Lou Costello Youth Foundation, a sports center Lou and his partner, Bud Abbott, built on East Olympic Boulevard. The day after Bugsie departed this life, the sun-blackened peddlers who sell maps of movie stars’ homes to tourists along Sunset Boulevard latched onto a new sales dodge with hastily scrawled signs that said: “See Where Bugsie Met His End.”
One old friend of his, Countess Dorothy Taylor di Frasso, was in Europe when she heard the news. “Bugsie, Bugsie?” she said, and eyebrows could be heard arching over the telephone. “Why, I don’t know any Bugsie. Could you mean Mr. Benjamin Siegel?” An amateur gentleman to the final curtain, he would have appreciated the formality.
“I was very fond of Mr. Siegel,” the countess allowed, “but it is utterly ridiculous to say I was in love with him.” A man in her life that she really cottoned to was Gary Cooper. She snaffled him up when he was worn out from too many pictures and too much Lupe Velez. She whisked him off aboard a slow boat to a safari in Africa.
She found our town an unplowed pasture for her type of worldliness, mixing titles with prize fighters and topnotch actors with show girls. At one of her parties she hid a recording machine under a sofa in the hope of picking up some spice from her unsuspecting guests. Jack Barrymore ruined it. He sat there, unknowing, and delivered a monologue of tangy reminiscences about every celebrity who entered, including his delightful hostess. Unaware of all this, the countess grabbed an opportunity to remove the record and summon her closest pals up to her bedroom to hear a playback. After it made a few revolutions on the turntable, she snatched the record off and smashed it on the floor.