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■ She knew that she loved Stephen Langley desperately and must win him by any means. Yet, in that breathless moment of desire, she realized she hadn't counted the cost. A beautiful young star tells the powerful true story of the lesson she learned
a single breath, I flew upstairs, but stopped outside our own apartment door, remembering to keep my joy to myself. I went out and walked, instead of telling Ma and Marion, in pouring, sleety winter rain. And when I went to my audition, I didn't tell where I was going. How could I have gone back and let them know if I failed? It was hard enough, to keep ambition alive, without having to acknowledge failure. But I couldn't fail. I wouldn't. I must be accepted. I'd die if I wasn't accepted.
Never, before walking into that studio, had I known how hard my heart could beat. On my way from the elevator I passed the control room. The door was standing open. The thought of having to satisfy mechanical devices was even more terrifying than the thought of having to satisfy people.
There was a kind of reception room, and beyond it a room where I could see a piano, a man pacing up and down, and a younger man lounging on the piano bench, one arm resting on the music rack. A tall girl was leaving the studio. Swathed in beautiful furs, she looked like a fashion model. Carrying an elegant portfolio she glanced amusedly at me and my worn high school briefcase. Evidently she had just finished her audition. Was I supposed to compete with her?
Yet I thought the man who was pacing the room looked displeased with her. I was sure he was. She could not have been accepted, if he was. By approaching the piano just then, he came into the part of the room I could see. He started looking through a pile of sheet music on the piano.
And he was — he was everything, everything my dreams had ever pictured to me. He was all the top-hat escorts I ever had dreamed, all the men my heart and mind and feet had danced with at night clubs, in imagination, while my fingers, stumbling in weariness, sewed beads on evening bags for other girls to carry. He was the producer of the programs I had dreamed of singing on, he was my dream accompanist, he was all the men in all the audiences I'd dreamed of singing to.
I don't mean I fell in love with him. It wasn't that. Not then. He was too wonderful, too overpowering, not just too wonderful for me, but for any one. And he was not impressed by the girl who had just left the studio.
■ The night I won a prize in a bathing beauty contest, I thought it was my first step toward Hollywood. My sister Marion was furious and wanted me to finish my business course.
JANUARY, 1941