Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories Read Free Page B

Hat—ankles and wrists tied with rope in the same way as The Black Dahlia —some of the same kind of torture-stab-wounds—and left in a bathtub naked—(but not dissected at the waist like Betty)—so you might think the same guy did both murders—but the detectives couldn’t come up with any actual “suspects”—there just wasn’t evidence & in the meantime there’s kooks confessing to the murder—not just men but some women too!
    Could be just a coincidence , I thought then, & I think now. Anyway—K.K. is not going to get involved.
    NORMA JEANE BAKER:
    It was just a n-nightmare.
    It was the awfulest—most horrible—thing . . .
    You could not ever imagine such a—an awful thing . . .
    When I came back to the room that night I was kind of m-mad at Betty ’cause she’d stood me up at the Top Hat—also Betty had not paid me back the thirty dollars she owed me—thirty dollars was a lot —also Betty was always in my things—she would “borrow” & never return what she took—like my lipsticks— that made me mad!
    At 20th Century-Fox I went to auditions all the time. Betty was not on contract but got on a list to audition, too—it costs money for makeup & clothes—& hair—Betty dyed her hair that inky-black color—my hair, that was brown, about the color of Betty’s natural hair, they made me bleach at the Blue Book Agency saying they could get twice as many shoots for me as with my brown hair & this turned out to be correct though an understatement—more like three times as many shoots. Like Anita Loos says— Gentlemen Prefer Blondes —this is a fact.
    But Betty Short had the wrong complexion for blond—so dyed-black hair was perfect for her. & with white makeup & powder & dark lipstick she made herself look really glamorous—“sexy.”
    Always wearing black clothes—that wasn’t Betty’s idea but some agent. Trying to get Betty Short work in the studios. Not who you are but who you know —they’d tell us. To get a contract you’d have to “entertain” the producers & their friends & then to keep the contract renewed you’d be expected to live in one of their residences like Mr. Hansen’s—he liked us to lie around the pool in the sun in teeny bathing suits & sunglasses—it was just party, party, party night after night & Betty Short thrived on it—& sleeping through the day—but I needed to get to my acting class & my dance class & that was no joke—you can’t audition either, if you are hungover & have shadows under your eyes. So—Betty Short & me—we did not always get along 100 percent—being from different backgrounds too for Betty did actually have a “father”—she’d lived with him before coming to L.A.—she showed me pictures of him—& she said Oh my father was pretty well-to-do in Medford, Mass. when I was a little girl—see, this is my sisters & me on Daddy’s miniature golf course—then Daddy lost the business—people stopped buying miniature golf courses I guess—in the damn old Depression.
    And I was so jealous!—I said Oh Betty at least you have a f-father—you could go to him in Vallejo even now & Betty said with this hurt angry look Like hell I would never crawl back to him or to any God-damn man , my drunk father kicked me out saying I was no good, I was not even a good housekeeper like my mother, & Daddy accused me of being a strumpet & a whore—just on the evidence that I dated some boys.
    & I said But maybe your father feels differently now, you are older now & maybe he needs you & Betty looks as me like I am an idiot saying Maybe he needs me but I don’t need him, & I don’t need any man to boss me around, I will marry a rich man who adores me & wants to please ME not the other God-damn way around, see?
    So I backed off. I did not say that Betty had no idea how sad it is not to have a father—even a drunk father—& not to have a mother—even a sick mother like my mother who “could not keep me” because she had “mental