Show Business Kills (5 page)

O
ver the last ten years, she’d moved from one piece-of-shit apartment to another so often that by the time some of her mail
actually found her, it had two or three forwarding stickers slapped one on top of the other. -Most of the junk shoved in her
mailbox wasn’t worth the tree they had to kill to get the paper. A few catalogues, with a lot of fancy items in them that
she couldn’t afford. A bill there was no way she could pay, so with a flick of her wrist she tossed that one right in the
wastebasket
.

Let them come and get me, she thought. As it was, she could barely make the rent for this rathole apartment, in a neighborhood
so bad she had to keep a gun in the kitchen drawer just in case one of those spics who lived across the way got any ideas
.

Wasn’t it great, she thought, that the one slick, good-looking upscale magazine that found its way to her every time was the
alumni news? She didn’t have to pay for it, and she always made sure to supply that office with her new address so they’d
know where to send it. Of course when she wrote to them, she never told them any info about what she was really doing, like
they asked. Oh please. With all the big-time players they listed in there from her class alone
?

Every few months when the magazine was there in her mailbox at the end of a long day’s work, she’d drop everything to sit
and read it. Not the articles about homecoming and the new student computer center. She skipped over those, right to the part
where they listed the goings-on about the people from her department and her year
.

DRAMA—Class of ‘66

Albertson, Sherry. Sherry writes in, “I am still teaching acting technique at the La Jolla Playhouse and loving it.”

Teaching. Big deal. She knew the frustration of teaching when what you really wanted to do was act. She’d done it herself
for a while. Taught speech to a bunch of airheads at an acting school. Forget that shit! Skip Sherry Albertson. Who else
?

Bradford, Freeman. Freeman is scene designer for the Seattle Repertory Company.

Nice going, Freeman, she thought, remembering he had been a nerd
.

Bass, Ellen. Ellen Bass was Ellen Feinberg and is now the vice president in charge of feature films at Hemisphere Studios
in Hollywood. Recent films under her aegis starred Jodie Foster, Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

That one made her close the magazine for a minute and sit
staring around her dingy dive of an apartment. She had written her first letter to Ellen Bass when she read that she was in
some production job at 20th Century-Fox a few years ago, but she never got an answer. Then she actually got up the nerve to
call her when she saw that she got that big job at Hemisphere Studios, and some male secretary with an attitude problem asked,
“Will she know what this is regarding?” It was so condescending, she hung up. Then last year she sent her the tape, the brilliant
tape, and Ellen fucking Bass never so much as sent a thank-you note. Why was it so hard to just scribble a few lines saying,
“Thank you. I got the tape” But not one word
.

Feldman, Sanford. Composer Sandy Feld has scored five Broadway musicals. He lives with his wife and children in Connecticut,
and this year he generously gave his time to come and speak to the music majors about how to break into the theater.

Her stomach acid surged up into her esophagus. That little musical genius Sandy Feldman had gotten her stoned one night at
a party during their senior year and tried to score
her.
Cut me a break, she thought. Five Broadway musicals? She hadn’t even
seen
five Broadway musicals. Only one. That glorious time a bunch of them piled into a car and drove from Pittsburgh to New York
City
.

It was before seat belts, and there were too many of them for Sandy Feldman’s little Chevy, so most of the way she sat on
Jack Solomon’s lap. Best time he ever had in his whole life, he kept joking. And then they got to New York. What a city. It
was all lit up and it was snowing, and they all stood
in line together waiting to buy twofers for
How to Succeed,
singing Christmas carols and laughing
.

The musical made her feet leave the ground. Robert Morse, Michelle Lee, and Charles Nelson Reilly, and every song was a gem.
Afterward they all walked, with their arms around one another, all over the theater district, Shubert Alley, and Sardi’s,
singing that song, “Brotherhood of Man,” and swearing that someday they’d all be working there. Together. All of them were
so sure then that working in the theater was their destiny
.

She was one of them then. Young and pretty, with her carrot-colored hair down to her waist. The best actress in the class.
Jack Solomon called her that for the first time after freshman year, during a rehearsal of
The Cherry Orchard.
He told her it was her great, deep, sexy bedroom voice that filled the theater and made her impossible to ignore on stage.
And he wasn’t even looking to get laid when he said it. No, Jack was always hot for Jan O’Malley. Besides, he was such a little
jerko in those days, no one would have dreamt of him as a boyfriend. And now he was big-time Jack Solomon, who wasn’t even
on this list, probably because he was too famous now to take the time to write in and tell the alumni magazine what he was
doing
.

In some newspaper article she read a while back, it said that Jack Solomon gave two million dollars to some museum in New
York. Imagine having a spare couple of million you could just give away. That was something. Her eyes moved down the page
and stopped to read a little piece of gossip
.

Mann, Marly Bennet. Marly was a key player on a long-running situation comedy, “Keeping
Up with the Joneses.” You’ve also seen her in many movies of the week and miniseries. Also since her arrival in Hollywood,
Marly has acted in over one hundred and fifty commercials. Marly writes whimsically to this office, “Am happy to report that
I’m legally separated from Billy Mann, so all college sweethearts can contact me through the alumni association.” Marly and
ex-husband, late-night-TV-star Billy Mann, have twin daughters, Jennifer and Sarah.

Oooh, separated. Maybe that’s why Marly didn’t get her letters. She’d mailed them to Marly in care of “The Billy Mann Show,”
thinking Billy would bring them home. But the big TV star dumped her. Tough break, Marly, she thought. But you’ll survive.
Someone with my simple tastes could probably live for a year on one month of the child support you’ll get for the twins. Now
she skipped down the list, looking only at the names of the people she used to know well
.

Morris, Rose. The film
Faces
, which starred Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, brought screenwriter Rose Morris Schiffman an Oscar nomination for best original
screenplay. Rose was widowed in 1982 by the death of department-of-architecture graduate (’66) Allan Bayliss. Rose and her
second husband, physician Andrew Schiffman, have a ten-year-old daughter, Molly.

She thought about the day Rose Morris and Allan Bayliss got pinned in a fraternity-pinning ceremony held outside in front
of
the dorm. Those two loved one another big time, in an almost mystical way. They were the couple she always thought about when
she learned the term soul mates. They even looked alike
.

She could still picture that funny little four-eyes Rose Morris nervously running down the stairs to untie Allan from the
tree where the Sigma Nu’s had tied him as part of the ritual. She had to kiss him in front of everyone and she was mortified,
didn’t want to go out there alone, but none of her buddies would go with her. Brave it, or some shit like that, they told
her. You can do it
.

Rose was terrified. She was on her way up to her room after a dance class, and when Rose spotted her, she grabbed her. “Please
just walk me out there,” she said. “I’m too afraid to do this alone.” It was no big deal to her, those fraternity jerks didn’t
intimidate her. So she walked Rose down the steps and out to the tree. Stood next to her while she kissed Allan and untied
him and the Sigma Nu’s sang the goopy sweetheart song, with Rose blushing flame red
.

So naturally when she was sitting with her daughter in the State Theater, and Rose’s name came on the screen, she let out
a yelp and embarrassed the shit out of Polly. “I know her,” she said, really loud, “I saved her ass one time,” and Polly covered
her face with her hands and someone a few rows back yelled, “Shut up, lady!
”

All the way home from Rose’s movie that night, she kept thinking, I could have played the part in
Faces
better than Meryl Streep did. I could have at least played the sister. She tried to call Rose the day after she saw the movie.
She was going to remind her about the pinning. She was going to say she remembered how much she and Allan loved one another.
Rose would appreciate that
.

She was going to ask her for help in the business, but the information operator in Los Angeles told her, “Sorry, but that
phone is unlisted.” Unlisted! Who do these people think they are? Who are they hiding from, when they don’t list their goddamn
phone numbers
?

Norell, Betty. Betty Norell spends summers with her family in California, but through an exchange with British Equity, she
winters in repertory at Chichester, the theater started by Laurence Olivier. Writes Betty: “It’s theater just as we’d all
once hoped it would be. And many of our glorious productions move on to the West End.”

She read that one over three times. Looks like good old Betty was the only one who was living up to the vow. Doing the kind
of things they all swore they’d do some day. Making the rest of them seem as if they’d gone the way of the glitz. Sold themselves
down the old L.A. river. Well, Betty always was the best actress in her class, and the most serious one about her work, she’d
give her that
.

O’Malley, Jan. Jan is now in her fifteenth year of playing the part of Maggie Flynn on the daytime drama “My Brightest Day.”
In 1991, Jan, still single, adopted a baby son, Joey, and tells us in her letters, “As a result, I am finally alive.”

That one made her close the magazine and fling it across the room. A baby. They gave Jan O’Malley a baby. See what
being a star can get you? I lose custody of my kids, and she gets to buy a baby! Look at these women’s lives! Look at mine!
I graduated from the same school! I was the best one, and now I have nothing to show for it. And they have it all. Money,
babies, their pictures in
TV Guide
and the paper. And the clothes. That sequined dress Jan O’Malley wore on the Daytime Emmys had to cost at least five thousand
dollars
.

She got up and walked over to the window of her apartment, the window with the view of the back alley and the trash cans from
the building next door. I’m forty-nine years old, she thought. When do I get mine? When do I get to have a decent life? And
why don’t they help me? The tears of jealousy that had been burning behind her eyes finally came and rolled down her unhappy
face
.

I have to get them to help me. I know they will, she thought. If only I can get them on the phone
.

  
4
  

E
llen’s Donna Karan control-top panty hose were a little too controlling, and the waistband was cutting into that bulging place
around her middle where her waistline used to be before she ate all those power lunches at Le Dome. She always got so pumped
up at those meetings, brainstorming new projects, courting the talent, hearing their ideas, that most of the time she gobbled
her lunch without thinking about what she was eating. Lost her head and devoured all the bread, ordered too much food and
then ate it too fast.

Once in the middle of a story pitch, over lunch at the Ivy, she noticed the writer was frowning uncomfortably at her, and
when she looked down she realized it was because her fork was spearing a roasted red potato she’d been about to remove from
his plate. Usually by the time the valet brought her BMW to the curb of those restaurants, after the big goodbyes and hyped-up
promises everyone made to one another, she couldn’t wait to drive away alone so she could reach back, unbutton the back of
her skirt, and breathe.