She had a competitor in the same line of business who one evening telephoned a visiting English knight in the middle of a dinner party to say she’d seen his name in the papers and could she provide him with a steady companion for his lonely hours.
In Beverly Hills you can call on furriers who’ll be glad to sell a mink coat at $20,000, a chinchilla wrap for $15,000, or an ermine-covered toilet seat. You can have your hair dressed by George Masters, who’ll bill you up to you-name-it for a home appointment, or a make-up by Gene Hibbs, who invented an ingenious, invisible bit of nylon mesh with a rubber band suspended from tiny hooks pulled up through your hair which, for special occasions, takes more years off your looks than plastic surgery.
If you’re a celebrity anywhere, your cost of living takes a leap, but in our town it jumps sky high. Any star looking to buy a house tries to keep his identity secret until closing day or else the price will be doubled. A star of the opposite sex will be charged $5000 by her obstetrician for delivering a baby.
When Norma Shearer was first pregnant, she was aghast to hear what the bill would be. “Very well,” the doctor compromised, “I’ll gamble with you. I’ll charge $5000 for a boy, $1000 for a girl. Okay?” Norma lost the bet when Irving Thalberg, Jr., was born.
Some of our citizens fall into the habits of European royalty and carry no money whatever in their pockets. Shirley MacLaine was working on The Children’s Hour when Sam Goldwyn invited her to dine tête-à-tête with him and see a private showing of his old-time movie, Stella Dallas. It provided an evening out as unsophisticated as a flour sack.
She told me: “While we were looking at the picture, I started to scratch. I was wearing a wool dress I hadn’t had on for months and apparently it had gotten moths or something. I was afraid he’d think I wasn’t enjoying Stella. When we got out, he said, ‘How about a soda?’”
In his Thunderbird they drove to Will Wright’s on Sunset Boulevard. At the next table some youngsters were having a ball burning holes in soda straws to make improvised flutes, then blowing tunes on them. Sam asked for a lesson and soon sat in to play his own straw flute.
“The girl came with our orders,” Shirley reported, “and we ate them. Then he went through all his pockets before he finally said, ‘You got any money on you?’ But I’d left my bag at the studio.”
He called over the waitress, who wore her name on a lapel pin: “Nancy, have you ever been out with a male friend and been so embarrassed because he didn’t have any money with him?” Nancy smiled sympathetically. “How about if I sign an I.O.U. and have my wife, Frances, come down tomorrow to pay you?”
That was agreed. Sam leaned over confidentially toward Shirley. “Since we’re getting ’em free, let’s have a couple more.” They had three each before they went outside and flagged down his chauffeur, who’d followed them in another car.