The glitz and glamour of Romanoff’s, the place to see and be seen
in the golden days of Hollywood, was not bulletproof during World War II. My muse
transmits to my blog from the ethers an imaginary tale reminiscent of Los
Angeles’ vulnerability during the war. It happened on February 25, 1942 -Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist
WAR COMES TO
HOLLYWOOD
“For several weeks, I had been
hard at work on a film in Hollywood for MGM in which I played a battered secret
agent in a World War II spy film. I came to Hollywood from cattle country
originally. I was a bona-fide cowboy in those days—horse, ten-gallon hat, spurs,
and sidearms—the whole rig. I got it in my head that I could rake in some real
dough as a stunt man in Hollywood, so I packed my meager belongings and headed farther
west. Things went well for me in Tinsel Town as a stunt man, and before long, I
got actual parts in movies, speaking a few lines and sometimes kissing a girl.
I was tall and blond and smooth-faced, and the studio heads took notice when
fan-mail started showing up for me. It was a natural transition for me from bit
player to Matinee Idol. I capitalize the term because Matinee Idol meant money,
big money, and sprawling houses and pricey cars and expensive dames—lots and
lots of expensive dames.
“There
were marriages in between—marriages to two of those high-priced dames—boring,
soul-robbing marriages. Not only did they empty out my bank accounts, but they
sucked me dry in just about every other way you can imagine, and it showed—on
my face, which is the curse of any Hollywood player. My boudoir-days were over,
at least on the silver screen. I was lucky to evolve from Matinee Idol to character
actor, but still getting top billing and good money, most of the time. My
older, craggy face fit in just fine as a saddle-worn but quick-draw sheriff in
Westerns, the big, tough guy charged with saving the town and the girl from the
bad guys. And then the war created a whole new genre of films in which ‘aging actors’
like me could go on working, hopefully all the way to retirement.
“I was at Romanoff’s that Wednesday night of
February 25, 1942, slugging back scotch and avoiding chit-chat with my famous
peers. Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor slipped by. I raised my glass in a
curt hello and then turned back to my serious drinking. I didn’t like Romanoff’s much. There was a phony and
irritatingly glitzy air to it, phony and glitzy like its owner and founder, one
Prince Michael Dimitri Alexandrovich Obelensky-Romanoff, nephew of the tragic
and safely dead Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. The real deal was that the prince
was one Hershel Geguzin, native son of Lithuania and not a royal bone in his
body, who landed by boat as a child in Brooklyn, and then to Cincinnati as a
fully-grown pants presser named, Harry Gerguson. His arrival in Hollywood as
the Russian Prince Romanoff was a story of make-believe to rival anything immortalized
on film by Louis B. Mayer. Anyway, I was at Romanoff’s
to meet a girl, or at least, I hoped to meet a girl—the girl—I was damn well convinced
of it. Trouble was, she wasn’t convinced of it at all.
“I had met the
sweet young thing, Adele was her name, a few months back at Perino’s. She was a model—tall and
slender and well-formed in all the right places. On a regular basis, Alexander Perino, an Italian immigrant rumored
to have Mafia ties, pushed back the tables of his fine-dining, Hollywood
restaurant and featured fashion shows. The sweet young thing slithered out in a
silky floor-length getup one evening, and slipped straight into my heart. I
corralled her to my table and spent the rest of the night fighting off every
other guy in the place. I did learn that like most beautiful females in La La
Land, she lived for the day she could leave the runway behind and mount the
film set. She was from a small town in Ohio—had made it to first runner-up in
the Miss Ohio Beauty Pageant a couple of years before. I pointed out to her
that Hollywood was overrun with former beauty queens aching with the same dream,
girls busting tables, ushering at theaters, and changing dirty diapers on rich
people’s kids. A few months down the road, I asked her to marry me. She looked
me straight in the eye and replied, ‘No way!’ But I wouldn’t give up. I
couldn’t give up!
“For those of
you who think that nothing happens in Los Angeles but sick Hollywood marriages,
divorces, trysts on casting director’s couches, and wild-fires, let me take you
back to the clear moonlit night of Wednesday, February 25, 1942, the place I
began this story. In case you haven’t put it together in your mind, while all the
hanky-panky was going on at Romanoff’s and
Perino’s, and other Hollywood
hotspots, the United States was into World War II for nigh on to three months following
Japan’s bombing of America’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Nipping at
the heels of Japan’s warmongering, Germany and Italy got in on the act and
declared war on the United States, too.
“In fear of an
attack on mainland United States by Japan, the early months of 1942 found the
nerves of the populace of west-coast America as tight as a bow string. People
were on their last nerve when on Monday, February 23rd of 1942, a
Japanese submarine surfaced and shelled oil installations at Ellwood, California,
located about 2 ½ hours north of Los Angeles—plainly, the worst fears had come
true: Japan had brought the war to California. But the war was the last thing
on my mind. I was going to bed this gorgeous female and make her mine.
“She finally
showed up that night—very late and very standoffish in a whole new way. By that
time, I had sobered up and wanted nothing more than a pillow under my head. We
did have a drink, though, and then left the restaurant together. As soon as we
stepped out into the moonlit night, I looked at my watch. It was precisely 2:17
AM. I’m going to look like roadkill
tomorrow, I said in my mind. I had a 6:00 AM makeup call and it wasn’t a
foregone conclusion that I would be in any shape to show up for it. I walked
her to her car and she leaned back against the driver’s side door. ‘We need to
talk,’ she said to me. She reached into her little purse, extracted her silver
cigarette case, flipped it open, and pulled out a cigarette. ‘You?’ she asked,
offering me a smoke.
“I shook my head
and said, ‘What’s on your mind, my lovely?’ She placed the cigarette between
her lips. ‘The blackout,’ I reminded her.
“She cupped her free
hand over the end of the cigarette to deaden its light and then lit it with her
silver lighter. Squinting her left eye against the fumes, she drew on the
cigarette deeply. A gentle breeze caught her exhaled smoke and carried it away.
Her face in the moonlight was the Madonna’s. My heart leaped with love for her.
‘I’m going away,’ she told me.
“‘What?! Going
away?! Where?!’
“‘I’m going
home. I need to spend some time with my family to get them used to the idea
that I’ll leave again when Congress passes the bill that will allow women to
join the military. And as soon as it’s passed, I’ll join up. I’m leaving for
Ohio the day after tomorrow.’
“‘But, wait! You
can’t…’ My words were ripped from my mouth by the earsplitting wail of a
siren—one siren, and then two sirens, and then a shrill chorus of screaming sirens
from every direction. A group of people ran out of the restaurant, their legs
pumping like mad to their vehicles. One of the guys stopped for a second and
yelled, ‘We’ve been hit! The goddamn Japs hit us!’
“I looked up,
and there it was—an aircraft of some kind hovering menacingly above the city.
Searchlights lit it up like a second moon in the sky. ‘Jesus!’ I yelled. I
grabbed Adele by the arm and hustled her to my car. The ‘ack ack’ of the city’s
defense guns split the night as I steered my car through the dark streets. It
was like crazy dodge cars out there. Cars were crashing into other cars, and who
knows what else? We made it back to my house in one piece. The conflagration
outside the walls calmed down after a while, but we were too keyed-up to relax.
I looked for a chink in Adele’s attitude—some glimmer of affection for
me—something I could hold on to. But she was as stiff as a statue.
“There was no
sleep that night for Angeleños. The morning news was full of updates. Although
no bombs were dropped, the city did not escape unscathed. Three residents lost
their lives in automobile accidents and two others died of heart attacks. All
manner of property was damaged from shells and shrapnel. Many people were
injured in various ways dashing about seeking cover—in some cases including
thousands of volunteer air-raid wardens who frantically tried to tamp down the impending
pandemonium. But, despite all the unfortunate consequences, exhilaration was in
the air. The city had met its first taste of war with valor. But soon
exhilaration turned to humiliation and then outrage when the Secretary of the
Navy admitted that no attack by Japan had actually occurred. He blamed it on
citizen jitters. Two possibilities were floated. Either the weird object in the
sky was a weather balloon, or it was shell bursts from defensive ground guns
that were illuminated weirdly by searchlights.
I drove Adele back to Romanoff’s. She reached across the seat
of my car and kissed me. I watched her scoot out of my car and into hers. She
gunned the engine and then sped down Rodeo Drive and out of my life. I knew in
my gut I would never see her again. Like a curtain parting before my mind’s
eye, I saw that she was hurrying toward a destiny I never imagined for her. She
put me to shame. It came home to me what a shallow and narcissistic scoundrel I
was. There was something going on that was a whole lot bigger than me, and it
was time for me to grow some balls and do my part. I pulled my car out of the
parking space and pointed it to the nearest Army Recruitment Center.© -Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist
The
above is a work of historical fiction based on the actual February 25, 1942
false-alarm attack at Los Angeles.
Images:
Husband and wife movie-stars, Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck, Romanoff’s Restaurant circa 1940s, UFO over
Los Angeles, February 25, 1942.
#Hollywood,
#LosAngeles, #Romanoff’s, #MGM, #LouisBMayer, #WorldWar11, #BarbaraStanwyck,
#RobertTaylor, #MissOhioBeautyPageant, #WACS, #AChanceAtTheMoon, #LindaLeeGreene
***
Amid the seductions of Las Vegas, Nevada,
a sextet of opposites converge within a shared fate: a glamorous movie-star
courting distractions from her troubled past; her shell-shocked bodyguards
clutching handholds out of their hardscrabble lives; a dropout Hawaiian nuclear
physicist gambling his way back home; a Navajo rancher seeking cleansing for harming
Mother Earth; and from its lofty perch, the Hawaiian’s guardian spirit conjured
as his pet raven that conducts this symphony of soul odysseys. It all unfolds in
multi-award-winning
author, Linda Lee Greene’s
novel, A CHANCE AT THE MOON.
A reader says of the
novel, “A gripping tale of romance, vices, glamour, insecurities, betrayal, and
murder written in a very descriptive and artistic manner which paints a picture
of the environment and characters. This was clearly well-researched and
possesses a number of facts and detail on topics from uranium to realistic
atmospheres.” 5 Stars
