[Celebrity Murder Case 03] - The Tallulah Bankhead Murder Case Read online

  “I couldn’t. You were a somebody. I was a nobody.”

  “Well, now that I’m a somebody who’s threatened with being a nobody, Jacob Singer, you just speak your piece.”

  “Mrs. Parker, now you’re Mrs. Alan Campbell.”

  “Don’t tell me, tell him.” She stirred her drink with her index finger, licked the finger, and then spoke quietly. “My husband, my dear old friend, is a very attractive man. He is my collaborator on film scripts, most of which he writes, because I hate writing anything, let alone film scripts. He is dear, attentive, and like me, he drinks too much, and also like me, is a very good drinker, he’s never obstreperous or obnoxious. But unlike me, Mr. Singer, my husband is a homosexual. Oh, don’t look so shocked Everybody knows it. Even Alan knows it.” Her glass was empty. “I need another drink. And very soon. I’m going to need another husband. And that’s not why I asked you to have a drink with me today.” Singer signaled the waiter for refills and returned his attention to Mrs. Parker “I need to work, Mr. Singer. I’ve never been very good with money. I need to get my name cleared. The only prospect I have in New York is to collaborate on a play for Broadway, and you know how chancy that is. After all these years, you must have friends in high places. Mr. Singer, can you help me?”

  In a small room on the seventeenth floor of the very same hotel, the brilliant actor Michael Damoff was speaking to his son Gabriel, the author of a play now trying out in New Haven.

  “Don’t you dare do that, Gabriel,” said Michael Darnoff sternly “Don’t you dare fire an actor out of your play just to give me a job.”

  “I should have insisted you played it in the first place, Pop. I swear this guy’s a bum, he’s no good. He’s fucking up the whole second act.”

  Michael Darnoff stared around the room, fighting back the tears.

  “Pop? Pop?” shouted the young playwright in New Haven.

  “I’m here, I’m here. I’m tired. I can’t think anymore. A whole lifetime of work and respect down the drain because a son of a bitch fingers me to HUAC.”

  “He’ll burn in hell, Pop Lester Miroff will burn in hell.”

  “You’re right. He just signed a deal with CBS-TV to host a new weekly program. Can you imagine that son of a bitch singing love songs again? You’d think he’d be hoarse from all the singing he’s been doing in Washington.”

  “Come to New Haven, Pop See the show. See for yourself what I mean My producer’s all for it! He wants you to replace this schmuck!”

  “Damn it, Gabriel. It’s just one scene, just one scene!”

  “It’s a terrific scene!”

  “I’m a star! I’m a big star! My Cyrano was legendary! Actors can’t do Iago or Lear without being compared to me!”

  “You’ll be a big star again! I’m writing my next play for you! It’s for you and someone like Bankhead…”

  “Oh, my God. Me on the same stage with Bankhead? She’ll chew me up. It’ll never work. Oh, what in the hell are we talking for? Don’t you realize what a threat it would be if I did your play now? Isn’t it enough you’re my son and the innuendos are already flying?”

  “Let ‘em fly!” shouted his son. “Screw ‘em! Screw ‘em all! Screw McCarthy and his fag stooges! Screw Vincent Hartnett and his threats to finger everybody. These are cretins! These arc brainless cretins!”

  “You’re right, my boy,” said Michael Darnoff, as he poured himself a tall vodka, “but think if they had brains, then they’d really be dangerous.” Michael heard his son’s laughter in New Haven as he took a swig of the vodka.

  “Pop, it’s good you still have your sense of humor.”

  “Without it I’d be Lee J. Cobb.”

  “Come to New Haven.”

  “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think so much! Just come!” His voice broke. “Pop, I love you so much. I can’t stand to see this happening to you!”

  “I got news for you! Neither can I?”

  In the Oak Bar, Jacob Singer was trying to reassure the worried Mrs. Parker. “I know a couple of biggies in Washington. Let me feel them out. It’ll take time I have to be subtle about it.”

  “Oh, be very subtle, Mr. Singer. I mean what the world needs now is subtlety. There’s so little of it. Shall we have another drink and be carefree?”

  “I’d be delighted, Mrs. Parker. And then perhaps you’ll join me for dinner.”

  “That would be charming. Signal the waiter. I’m parched.”

  They heard the screams from outside in the street and then they heard the thud of something heavy hitting the pavement. Singer was fast on his feet and rushed to a window. The body was lying flat on its back, in a pond of blood. He heard a gasp from behind him. It was Mrs. Parker.

  “My God,” she said softly. “It’s Michael Damoff. I haven’t seen him in ages

  TWO

  There was a look on Tallulah’s face that could wilt flowers. The two middle-aged men in the room watched as she stalked about the office with the slinky, sinuous movements of a caged panther, the inevitable Craven A poised between her lips, her voice breaking the sound barrier. “You’re damn right I’m a household name. I’m bigger than Brillol I’m the star of this show and I have a right to demand appearances by people I respect and feel comfortable with! Damn it, I want Abner Walsh on the show next Sunday!”

  The two men were advertising agency executives, and therefore very dull and pedantic. Osgood Platt had red hair, and Vernon Crane, dyed brown hair. It was said of Vernon Crane he used more hair dye than a television anchorman. The difference in hair color was the only way you could tell them apart, at any rate the only way Tallulah could tell them apart. Describing them to Estelle and Patsy, Tallulah said they were both so parched and wooden, if you strike a match near them they’d go up in flames.

  The two men made eye contact and then the red-haired Osgood Platt cleared his throat. “Miss Bankhead …”

  “And another thing,” roared Tallulah, a match for a cleared throat or a soft-spoken voice, “I intend to do a sketch with John Garfield which Goodman Ace is going to write for us. And don’t you dare tell me Julie Garfield is unacceptable!”

  “Miss Bankhead, will you kindly listen!” It was the dyed brown hair who had banged his fist on the desk and dared challenge her.

  Tallulah stopped in her tracks and stared at the dyed brown hair who had unfortunately positioned himself under one of those framed god-awful prints of a little wide-eyed girl clutching a little wide-eyed doll, which were a big hit at Woolworth’s. Tallulah drew her paisley shawl tightly around her shoulders in protest against the air-conditioning. “I’m listening, Mr. Craig …”

  “Crane,” he corrected her.

  “Oh really, dahling? When did you change it?”

  “Miss Bankhead, you are in serious danger of losing several of your sponsors.” Platt the redhead was nodding in agreement. It suddenly struck Tallulah he resembled Edgar Bergen’s other dummy, Mortimer Snerd. “Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Frankly I don’t. I thought in my time period I was beating all the competition including television.”

  “You are,” said Crane, “but they are thinking of withdrawing to bring home to you the importance, the seriousness of defeating the threat of the red menace in America.”

  Tallulah sat in a chair opposite them. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “It’s not just the fact that you insist on booking suspected subversives—”

  “What nonsense!”

  “But it’s your own past record.”

  Tallulah paled, and she stubbed out her cigarette. “What the hell do you mean by that!”

  Platt the redhead adjusted his pince-nez (“Pince-nez, dahlings, pince-nez, can you believe it! I presume he writes his memos with a quill!”) and referred to a document on his desk.

  Platt cleared his throat, cocked his head, and looked like Uriah Heep. “Miss Bankhead,” he said, speaking the name in a tone sepulchral and forbidding, “you’ve hear
d of Vincent Hartnett?”

  Of course she knew the name. Vincent Hartnett, the scourge of the blacklist. John Garfield had told her, “If he says you’re red, you’re dead. If he says you’re red, you’re listed in Red Chartnets and Aware, the official, deadly blacklist periodicals, and you’re finished. And Tallu, you won’t believe the old friends who are squealing on each other to save their own necks or just to get rid of the competition.”

  Tallulah stared at Platt coldly. “Mr. Plate …”

  “Platt”

  “Whatever … I know a cockroach when I see one. Apparently the only difference between the vermin and Mr. Hartnett is that he’s just a bit too big to be stepped on.”

  “He has provided us with a dossier of your past arid present associations.”

  Tallulah leaned forward, her hands clenched tightly together to keep them from trembling. “What the hell are you insinuating?”

  “I am not insinuating,” said Platt with a voice of solid steel. “I have before me in black and white the true, irrefutable facts.” He referred to the dossier. “You appeared in a play called The Little Foxes?”

  “Of course I did. It was my greatest triumph on Broadway!”

  “It was written by a Miss Lillian Hellman?”

  “It was.”

  “She’s been subpoenaed by the committee. You appeared in the play The Skin of Our Teeth?”

  “Are you trying to tell me Thornton Wilder the playwright is also accused?”

  “No, they can’t get anything on him.” He sounded like a child who’d just had his all-day sucker stolen “But they will be questioning the director of the play, Elia Kazan. Also one of your co-stars, Fredric March.”

  Tallulah was astonished. “Freddie March suspected of being a communist? They must be mad! The only threat he poses is to little girls’ behinds! He adores pinching them.” Then came the afterthought “Big girls’ too.”

  Platt ignored her verbal footnotes and continued in an ugly monotone. “You appeared in the play Clash by Night by Clifford Odets and co-starring Lee J. Cobb?” Tallulah just stared at him, her face no longer masking her contempt and revulsion. “Both men are in serious trouble.”

  Slowly Tallulah arose and leaned her hands on the desk. The paisley shawl fell to the floor as she addressed both men, coating every word with her own special brand of deadly venom. “How dare you! How dare you two little obscene toads threaten me with this stinking blackmail as repulsive as revolting as the ugly dye in your hair, Mr. Place—”

  “Platt!”

  “Don’t interrupt me, you rodent!” The other man closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. He’d heard tell of the Bankhead temper but never dreamt it could be this horrifyingly ferocious. Tallulah snatched the dossier, tore it to pieces in her uncontrollable rage, and flung the tatters, she hoped equally distributed, in their faces. “How dare you! How dare they! Whatever they say about me, just you assholes remember this. I’m Tallulah Bankhead, a legend in my own slime! My daddy, God rest his soul, was Speaker of the House of Representatives! My uncle and my grandfather, God rest their souls, were senators from Alabama!” She spat the next words. “All three were registered Democrats! And if they were alive today, they’d be spinning in their graves! Very well, gentlemen.” She retrieved the shawl from the floor and with two magnificent theatrical gestures, draped it back around her shoulders. Now looking like Joan of Arc armed for battle, she resumed speaking. “I shall live up to the letter of my contract. If you attempt to brand me a communist or cancel the program before the end of the season, I shall sue you for fifty million dollars and, dahlings, remember this, not you, not Hartnett, not any member of the fucking House Un-American Committee is as powerful as I am with the press and the public. I’ll see you all in purgatory before I permit you to try and make me bend before you. If there is a whisper, an insinuation, an innuendo about me as a suspected subversive, I shall destroy you.”

  “Now really, Miss Bankhead,” demurred the redhead, “we have no intention of canceling the program. We have every intention of living up to the terms of your contract.”

  “You damn well better. It’s ironclad.”

  “Indeed it is, but, Miss Bankhead, we will not permit John Garfield or your folksingcr Abner Walsh or even Charlie Chaplin or Larry Parks or Sterling Hayden or the rest of them there pinkos. If you try to put them on the program, the engineers will be instructed to pull the plug and substitute organ music!”

  “What organ? Certainly not yours, Mr. Plant, or yours, Mr. Crunch. Gentlemen, this is my last season with you. I will not renew should you want me to renew. And this is going to be one red-hot chapter in my forthcoming autobiography, which is being written by my press agent Richard Maney Let me tell you, I may be a firebrand but Maney’s a volcano!” With which words she swept out of the office, slamming the door behind her but politely remembering to say goodbye to the office staff, who were gathered outside the door They knew better than to applaud the performance she had just given, but they would each dine out on it for months to come.

  Gregory and Anya Hagle, both in their mid-fifties, had been writing collaborators since their student days at New York’s City College. It had truly been love at first slight, since Anya insulted him in the cafeteria when he usurped a chair she had been occupying. Later at a protest rally (they both forgot what they were protesting, since rallies got them out into the fresh air and provided exercise) she apologized and accepted his invitation to see Rudolph Valentino’s The Sheik. A few weeks after graduation, they were married, setting up housekeeping in the one-room apartment they rented in one of Brooklyn’s meaner districts. Gregory waited on tables, and Anya sold notions in a local five-and-dime At night they started to write plays together After three years of this blissful life, they had a play produced on Broadway. It wasn’t a success, but their combined talent was recognized.

  Talking pictures were on the horizon, and soon the Hagles were recruited to go to Hollywood to write pictures for such theater stalwarts as Ruth Chatterton, Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Edward G. Robinson, and so forth. Within a few years, they were solidly established in Hollywood, lost forever to Broadway, and leading a crusade to unionize scriptwriters, most of whom were sadly underpaid. After years of bitterness and snuggle, the union was established and grudgingly accepted, and the Hollywood moguls swore revenge against those who had fought to create the union.

  And so, in 1952, Gregory and Anya Hagle were subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, did appear, refused to testify on the grounds of self-incrimination, and now were unemployable. Childless, rootless, they left Hollywood and settled in a small but charming cottage in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near such old friends as playwrights Moss Hart, Joseph Schrank, George S Kaufman, and others, who urged them to write a play. They wrote the play, but the magic was missing. A producer friend offered charitably to give it a summer tryout at the popular Bucks County Playhouse, but both the Hagles were too wise not to realize there was no future to the play beyond the tryout.

  They sought work as script bootleggers, the way Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr. and Ian McClelland Hunter and others were doing with varying degrees of success, but what offers (one) they received were degrading and humiliating. Then Anya learned she had cancer. She didn’t despair, nor did Gregory. Although it had been unspoken for months, both were very tired of living They went to New York to dine with Dorothy Parker, who herself was tottering bravely on the brink of disaster and looking for a play collaborator At least Dorothy had some income from her earlier short stories, the Hagles were flat broke

  “We could all use some kind of a break,” Dorothy said in her soft voice, which they could barely hear above the din in Barney’s Steak House. “The trouble with us is we don’t have cookie-cutter talents. We’re unable to worship at the feet of that great Greek god, Mediocreties. God, at a time like this I wish I were vastly untalented so I could make a living. Don’t look so sad, my darlings. Somehow the wheel has
got to start revolving again in our favor. I know! Let’s order champagne! That’s what we need, the babbling bubbly to buck us up.”

  “We can’t afford champagne,” said Gregory.

  Anya said, “We can’t afford borscht.”

  “Hush!” cautioned Mrs. Parker as she stole a quick glance under the table, “Mustn’t say borscht! It’s subversive!”

  In their battered Chevrolet, driving back to Bucks County later that night, Anya snuggled next to Gregory. “It was sweet of Dottie to order the champagne. Did you notice how worn her gloves were at the fingers?”

  “I noticed only how worn her eyes were.”

  “Darling, have we anything on for tomorrow?” She was staring up at the skies which were aglitter with stars, shining brilliantly as stars could shine brilliantly only in the clearer firmament of the suburbs.

  “Nothing special.”

  “And the day after?”

  “Likewise.”

  “And after and after and after.”

  They had reached the old road along the Delaware River.

  “I guess we just ain’t got nothing much to look forward to, Miss Scarlett,” he said in one of his better imitations of Butterfly McQueen.

  “So why don’t you take your hands off the wheel and put your arms around me and pepper me with some hot kisses.”

  He was looking straight ahead through the windshield. He didn’t see the tears in her eyes, but he knew they were there. He didn’t speak because he knew if he did, the words would choke in his throat. He relinquished the wheel, he drew his wife tightly to him and pressed his lips against hers.

  It took three days of dragging the river to find the Hagles clutching each other tightly in death in their battered Chevrolet.

  “I’m reading George Santayana,” Dorothy Parker said to Tallulah Bankhead in Tallulah’s suite at the Elysee.

  “I thought you were a Nietzsche girl,” said Tallulah as she worried a fingernail with an emery board.