Everything and More Read Free Page B

tears, intruding into her soul. And Marylin was tender enough to permit the invasion.
    Roy jerked away from her mother’s grasp. “Mama, the whole idea’s dum-dum. That’s what comes from reading too many fan magazines.”
    “I reckon they do write a lot of hooey about how stars get discovered, but there’s a lot of truth, too. Actresses have to come from somewhere.”
    “You can’t really mean me to pretend I’m two years younger and keep getting up in front of those big shots?” Marylin said, raising her tear-streaked face.
    “You’ve always got the most applause,” NolaBee said, for once adamant with Marylin.
    “And it’s not exactly because she’s Katharine Cornell,” Roy said.
    “I reckon the studio talent scouts know where to find Katharine Cornell, but they aren’t looking. They don’t want Broadway actresses, they want beautiful girls.”
    “Mama, it’s crazy, there’s no chance,” wept Marylin.
    “I reckon you’re a Roy, a Wace, a Fairburn. You’ll make a chance,” said NolaBee. Drawn and pale, she looked like a gambler placing his last chip.

Book Two

1943
     
     
     
    This year, because of the war, the Board of Education has been busier than ever. Immediately after the entrance of the United States into the war, the Board ordered air-raid drills to be put into practice. In cooperation with the Civilian Defense, essential supplies were purchased.
    —
Beverly Hills High School
Watchtower,
1942
    Beverly Hills High School presented its annual Shakespearean Festival on April 23 and 24 for students and for the PTA mothers’ tea. The sensation of the festival was Marylin Wace in the role of Juliet from
Romeo and Juliet.
    —Ibid.
    Fernauld, Joshua R.: Writer, director. B. Bronx, New York, Jan. 20, 1896: ed., New York public sch. m. Ann Lottman, two children, Barbara Jane and Lincoln. Newspaper writer, novels
Victims
and
Journey.
Began assoc. with screen in 1921, writing
Victims
(Columbia). Other films include
Lava Flow,
1938, Academy Award. Directed
Vigilance
(Paramount), 1939.
    Pictures include:
That Lost Love, Princess Pat, Mr. Kelbo Goes to Berlin, After the Fall, Spring Laughter.
    —International Motion Picture Almanac,
1942–43
    There is an unspeakable clamor as the planes warm up before attack. When the last planes have left the deck, the commander’s specially marked plane appears suddenly on the flight deck, brought up by an incredibly fast elevator.
    —Life
article about Navy pilots, April 2, 1943

  
3
  
    Marylin sat holding a script on her lap, part of the semicircle on the dusty, shadowy stage of the Beverly Hills High School auditorium. Like the other girls, she wore a pleated skirt and a pastel sweater that matched her Bonnie Doone ankle socks—the uniform for any girl uninterested in courting a reputation as a freak. The boys onstage wore the de rigueur cords and white shirts with the two top buttons open, and the sleeves rolled to just above the elbow. None of them could afford to look different. As it was, they were already considered weirdos or exhibitionists for taking Radio Speech or working on the Shakespearean Festival or bounding around the stage like
cucarachas
in the Voice Choir’s production of a home-grown musical,
Fiesta.
They were the Juniors talented and devoted enough to drama to stay after school for these preliminary rehearsals of the class play.
    They fidgeted tolerantly while BJ Fernauld, an overweight, round-faced girl with a large red bow pinned behind her teetering black pompadour, scribbled down the margin of a smudged mimeograph sheet. BJ’s father was Joshua Fernauld, the famous Oscar-winning screenwriter, and doubtless Miss Nathans, the drama teacher, when selecting BJ’s comedy as the class play, had fallen under the influence of what BJ—in vaguely boastful secrecy—had admitted to her classmates was her father’s “light polish job.”
    “Egads, I’m a genius,” BJ chortled, then pitched her tone a couple of decibels deeper into