Authors: Thomas Tryon
In 1963 she went to Rome to make a picture,
Zenobia
,
Queen of Palmyra.
As everybody knew, she really needed a job; she wasn’t getting a nibble in Hollywood. In fact it looked as if no one anywhere would touch her, but Frank pulled another of his magic acts and got her signed on the dotted line. It was an Italian-French co-production, it paid only so-so, but she’d get the billing and they were going to find a top male star to play opposite her. (This turned out to be Jack Palance, but what the hell.) The Biblical epic was then in its heyday; they were grinding them out as fast as someone could come up with an idea. The old Fedora
Zenobia
had made money, so why not give it another whirl with the works: color, stereophonic sound, wide screen? They shot it in something called Cinema-Aspect 75, which was a lot of bunk; the prints were grainy, the color was washed out, but Belinda’s face was up there on the screen again, which was what counted. There she was, back in the beads and feathers, cast-iron tits and a double lipline, with eight yards of braided falls, sexing it up at Cinecittà. Frank had told her that if they liked her, there might be a two- or three-picture deal, and to keep her nose clean, no booze. He subsequently found out that clean noses had nothing to do with no booze.
This was in the early part of ’63, a year Jenny and I both remember with mixed emotions. Frank got me signed for a spy film to shoot in North Africa; mine was a dual role and looked interesting, and I’d get to ride a camel, not so interesting. Jenny would go, too. We’d been having more and more problems, the fights were coming thick and fast, we almost split up, but now we decided to try to save our marriage, and rather than costume another film, she’d take a break and go over with me. I was glad; I just couldn’t see us hitting the divorce courts and doing the mental-cruelty bit. If we’d had trouble, it was my fault as much as hers; our careers had a habit of getting in the way of things, and when she made this generous offer I was pleased.
I finished the picture in seven weeks—we were slowed down by high desert winds—but when I’d polished off my loops in Madrid, Frank said why not come over to Rome, he’d get me another picture.
At that point Kit Carson and April Rains were halfway through
The Trojan Horse.
It happened that Claire Regrett was also in town, shooting one of her last,
Vampire of the Catacombs
; they had her working underneath the Colosseum with thousands of sets of bones and prune-dried cadavers. And with Belinda making
Zenobia
, things promised to be interesting. With her had come her daughter, Faun, more precocious than ever. In the wake of the Bucky Eaton scandal, and thinking it prudent to remove the girl from home, Maude had made a present of this holiday. Belinda had decided that it might be just as well for Faun to be close at hand while her mother was filming. And no doubt Faun’s absence from Sunnyside was viewed as a well-deserved breather for Maude.
It was not a good time for Belinda. I found her greatly changed. The boozing had taken a heavy toll, and I didn’t see how she could possibly photograph well, but Frank’s report was that the producer was so enamored of her, it hardly mattered. Even so, things weren’t made easy for her. True to her fashion, Claire seemed to break into print every other day, in the
Rome Daily American
or in
Roma di Notte
, and at one point she went to considerable pains to take Belinda to task publicly. Belinda was seeing a flamenco dancer she’d picked up at the Pippastrella who, she claimed, was bedding her in a most satisfactory way. Claire was not long in leaping into print, upbraiding Belinda as one of those Hollywood actresses who did nothing to uphold the standards of the industry and went around giving the business a bad name and what would the people in Duluth think? She added that Faun was nothing but a spoiled little brat and should be spanked for her behavior. (Faun
was
running wild with the younger movie crowd.)
Later there were harsh words when the two actresses came across each other in the lobby of the Grand, and, having had one too many, Belinda was heard to refer to Claire as “that has-been,” which Claire countered by calling Belinda a “never-was.”
Jen and I agreed that Belinda was once more deliberately setting out to do herself in, as if she were determined to spurn every opportunity that came her way, to defeat all attempts to help her, to toss back the lifesaver ring, as if she had somehow decided that good fortune was never to be hers and she had no way to go but down, down, all the way down.
At that point Belinda was established in a peculiar category; she was like a queen without a kingdom, though she did hold court frequently, usually along Via Veneto, at Donay’s or another street café. Her courtiers and servitors were mostly Roman riffraff, true, but to the Italians she was still a hot ticket. (They called her “La Bionda.”) And often at her side was the almost grown-up sex kitten, Lolita herself, little Faun, her hair somewhat blonder than nature had decreed. And frequently between the mother and daughter sat the sleek and slick El Gatto, “the Cat.” Not a painter but a flamenco dancer, Belinda’s current flame masqueraded as a Spaniard from Toledo, son of a hidalgo, no less, but in reality he was a mongrel gypsy with a little Spanish blood and the longest sideburns this side of José Greco. His more intimate name was—what else?—José
—“il mio Joselito
,” Belinda called him—and he had earlier come to the world’s attention by doing a gypsy dance under the windows of
la signorina
Ava, who at that time occupied a flat at the end of the Piazza d’Espagna and who had her own Latin, a courageous
torero
, and didn’t need this ersatz “flamingo” dancer (as he had been called by Claire Regrett). Ava having ignored the would-be swain, Señor Joselito had proceeded to serenade yet another
signorina,
La Bionda, under
her
balcony at L’Albergo Grande.
All things considered, I deemed it wiser to avoid Belinda as much as I could. I saw her around, of course—Rome is a village and everyone sees everyone there, or did at that time. But we ran across each other one day at, of all places, the Trevi Fountain. Jenny had taken some American friends to see the gardens at the Villa d’Este and wouldn’t be back until dinnertime. I was out snapping pictures of the sights, and as I came into the piazza who should I see posing for tourist cameras but Belinda Carroll. She was lolling in the sun by the fountain, having the time of her life, laughing and rapping with whoever happened along. I would have passed her by, but she noticed me and came rushing over. I took her to a café where we sat under an awning and had a Negrone apiece. Negrones are a deadly drink and I never cared for them much (Frances Adano had introduced me to them), but that was what we ordered. Belinda and I chatted away ten to the dozen about this and that, the unbelievable problems on
The Trojan Horse
, about Jenny—Belinda seemed especially interested in hearing about her; she even thought to ask about Ronnie Alsop, and we ended up dashing off a postcard to her. Naturally, we talked about the hottest gossip item going: Frank’s affair with April Rains.
We had a couple more Negrones, then we abandoned the Trevi, and before I knew it we’d walked clear over to her hotel. By then we both knew what we had in mind, and we went up to her room. There were sessions of the Ecumenical Council still proceeding at the Vatican and our elevator car was full of priests. Belinda’s eyes crinkled with merriment at the idea of what that collection of celibates would think if they guessed our purpose in ascending together to the
sesto piano.
As soon as we entered the salon, I was confronted by the elaborately set bar Belinda maintained on a large refectory table. She didn’t bother with room service, but dispensed the liquor in job lots; she could have run a good-sized party on what she had in stock. I poured Zubrovka vodka over ice and we drank healths, and then we began tearing off our clothes. I drew the outside shutters, allowing that wonderful Roman afternoon-siesta light to filter through. Meanwhile, the traffic had thinned, and its brazen cacophony dimmed away while we lay in the bed making love. To tell the truth, I never had the least thought of Jenny out at the Villa d’Este, not one; until afterward, and then I thought a lot about a lot of things. I even thought about what if someone besides those priests had seen us come in, what if they were downstairs, waiting for us to come out again?
After we made love, I found some of that slushy Italian pop music on the radio, and we lay on top of the sheets as we had so often in the New York days, smoking Gauloises, sipping our vodka, and talking quietly. We weren’t kids, but we sure acted like it, even felt like it; Belinda was sweet beyond belief, filled with a warm gentleness and subdued humor. As she talked we kept stroking each other’s hair; mine was long after my African stint and I’d left it uncut; who knew what kind of movie Frank might come up with?
Later, when the traffic had begun getting noisy again, telling me it was time to get going, I went into the bathroom and turned on the taps to fill the tub, then went back to bed to discover that Belinda and I weren’t quite finished yet. After that we talked a while longer. As I recall the conversation, we were talking about love and happiness, marriage and fidelity, things like that. Perry Antrim had been dead for about ten years now, and though Belinda never said as much, I inferred that with his death all of her happiness had been swept away, and to her sorrow she never expected it to return. This of course was why she drank, to blot it all out. She said she certainly didn’t intend to marry again—which only went to show how wrong people can be about themselves. She said she now had a full-time job with Faun; there was so much to make up for; she’d let the girl down terribly and wanted to do better. She had given El Gatto the El Gate-o; and as to the future, she didn’t have a clue as to what she might do when her picture ended.
It wasn’t difficult deducing from what she said that she held little brief for April, and it was clear to me that the green-eyed monster was involved here. I figured that since April had nearly twenty years on her, Belinda probably had a right to envy her that beautiful skin, those clear eyes, that healthy outdoors look, but I was taken aback by the vehemence of her feelings about Frank. “After Perry, he’s the only one I really wanted. But he’s crazy if he thinks Frances is ever going to give him a divorce. She’d die first.”
At one point I shifted my position and as I glanced across the room I saw that the light through the shutters was being reflected in the floor in gleaming ripples. It took me a moment to figure out what was causing the liquid reflection; then I leaped up with a shout and rushed to turn off the tub. The floor was covered with my bathwater, and the Oriental rugs were sopping.
“What’ll we do?” I wondered, while Belinda just giggled.
“Get dressed and scram out of here quick,” she said. “Then I’ll ring for the
portière
or someone.”
I threw on my clothes, kissed her
arrivederci
, and left. Two of the same priests were in the elevator going down. When they saw me without Belinda, they looked a little disappointed. I couldn’t blame them.
Each time I saw her she shook me up somehow. I didn’t really understand my feelings then, but later I came to realize that I was probably in love with her but didn’t know it. What struck me most about Belinda at that time was that her ore was being annealed in a furnace of her own heating. Something inside her was moving to put herself to the supreme test; she was searching, groping. One day she took some things out of her bag and I saw a book by Krishnamurti, and when I mentioned the fact, she denied ownership; claimed it belonged to a friend. I judged that she was doing some groping, she was on a search, and of course I was right; she wanted, needed, something—something that that damnable mother of hers had always denied her.
The thing was, I
liked
Belinda. Her problems of temperament and ego-boosting went beyond those of most stars-in-difficulty, yet she was kindhearted, she was sensitive to other people’s problems, and she cared. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. It happened at a time when April and Frank and Jenny and I had been down at Capri during a break in April’s shooting schedule. Somehow Belinda had got wise to the fact that Frank and April were now holed up at the villa of the Contessa Ingrisi, a rich American divorcée we all knew—everyone knew Dodi in those days—and Belinda decided to play spoilsport. She got herself invited aboard the
Calliope
, which was carrying on its illustrious passenger list no less a celebrity than Madame Callas herself. When Belinda dropped the news that Dodi Ingrisi was playing hostess to America’s sweethearts, the yacht chugged off for Civitavecchia, where, as if on cue, the lovers appeared in full view, April giving Frank a hair trim on the Contessa’s terrace. Photographs were snapped through a telephoto lens, they were sold to
Oggi
, and when they appeared, the jig was up for Frank and April. In the meantime Hedda Hopper had blown into town and hell was to pay, the biggest mess possible—with Belinda at the bottom of it all.
When I found out about her involvement, I let her have it with both barrels. Filled with remorse over the mischief she’d caused, she went to April and apologized for her part in the affair, and as a result of that meeting the two women became friendly. Funny how things like that happen. Later, after Frank was killed, Belinda again went to April, to the place where she was institutionalized, to explain what had happened, but by that time April wasn’t running on Standard Time and it was merely wasted effort on Belinda’s part. But I think it’s important to acknowledge these and other examples of her goodheartedness.
One day, when I got back to the hotel, Jenny reported that Belinda had called. When I got her on the phone, she sounded depressed and asked if we could meet. She began to cry and I promised to come, then had to invent an excuse for Jen, who wasn’t fooled for an instant.
Belinda’s woes were on the upswing. It was Faun, of course. She’d come home the night before and bragged that she’d lost her virginity. With whom? With her mother’s discarded lover, the flamingo dancer.