“It sure will,” I said. “I’ll be ready sharp on time.” But I was still waiting at eight-thirty. Wondering what went wrong, I telephoned Omar’s house. His butler answered: “I’m terribly sorry, and I should have let you know. Mr. Kiam won’t be able to come for you. He has retired for the night.”
It dawned on me then what had happened. After delivering the gown he went home to celebrate, not wisely but too well, and had to be put to bed. I swept into Adrian’s living room an hour late. My red gown dimmed everything else in the room. Ina Clair, who was there, said: “You did it on purpose.”
I still have that red velvet—as the upholstery on two French chairs once owned by Elinor Glyn. Every morning when I open my eyes I see a memento of Omar Kiam. He did the clothes for both the pictures I made for Sam Goldwyn. In one of them, Vogues of 1938, which Walter Wanger produced, I played Joan Bennett’s mother. She and I had a certain exchange of words some years later.
Two lines in my column brought me the gift of a skunk from her. Here’s the story. Mothers usually had a tough time in pictures, especially with close-ups. They came almost always at the end of the day when you were tired and your make-up was messy. So it was on this picture.
It was not only the end of the day but the last scene in the picture and I was feeling desperately weary. I went to Walter Wanger and said: “I don’t think I can do that close-up. If you’ll let me come tomorrow morning, it won’t cost you anything.”
He said: “You’ll have to do it—I’d have to bring the whole crew in; it would cost a day’s salary for everyone.”
So I finished the scene and went to my dressing room and for the first time in my life fainted. How long I lay there I don’t know. When I woke I called for help. There wasn’t a soul around; everybody had gone home. I finally found a telephone and got the gateman to order me a cab, which took me home. Then I sent for a doctor.
Years later, when Joan was playing mother to Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride, I went on the set to interview Liz. There was Joan doing her close-up. I looked at my watch: it was 6:30 P.M. I remembered the misery I’d once endured, and in my column the following day, I wrote: “At last Miss Bennett knows how it feels to get her close-up at the end of the day and not at the beginning.”
For that she sent me a deodorized, live skunk. I christened it Joan and gave it to the James Masons, who had been looking for one as a companion for their nine cats.
In its rosier days, Hollywood Boulevard saw glamour by the carload on Oscar nights. Movie fans drove in, goggle-eyed, from every state in the Union to see the stars; a hundred searchlights would crisscross the sky. Bleachers set up on the sidewalk overflowed. Flashbulbs flared by the thousands as the queens slid out of their limousines, owned or rented, in minks and sables, which the studio would lend to dress up the show if your wardrobe didn’t run to such luxury. They’d glide across the sidewalk like some special, splendid race of the beautiful and the blessed; gowns swishing, hairdos immaculate; teeth, eyes, and diamonds gleaming together.